


Rojer

by x_los



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-15 14:43:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4610646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking down the Federation might actually be easier than sorting out what's going on with Rojer's parents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rojer

**Author's Note:**

> First reader: Elviaprose  
> Beta: Aralias
> 
> This was going to go in Aralias' forthcoming "Pride and Prejudice" zine, but so was another long, long fic of mine. After days of debate we went with 'one, not both' because paper costs money or something, and then with the other fic, which Aralias likes less but which better fits the concept of the zine.
> 
> You can read other fics from this zine by searching [the collection](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/PrideandPrejudice). You can also purchase your very own copy of the zine by contacting the publisher.

         Kerr Avon became a father on a bombed-out world covered in smoking rubble, which he felt was rather appropriate, all in all. Weakened after the Andromedan invasion, the Federation had decided it could no longer brook the threat the Clone Masters represented. They'd made an example of the planet: the Federation might be unsteady after the loss of so much of its infrastructure and military, but it could still brutally subdue even a relatively independent, powerful adversary.

         Eliminating the Clone Masters had been a stupid move – but then it had been planned and executed by stupid people. People left after abler and more responsible and far-seeing commanders had died protecting human-occupied worlds from the Andromedan fleet, or in Kasabi the Younger’s briefly-successful uprising on Earth in the wake of the invasion; after the entirely self-serving but ultimately capable Servalan had lost her position and been forced to assume an alias and live in backwaters.

         To make it easier on themselves, the Federation had carpet-bombed the world. In so doing, they had also destroyed anything the Clone Masters had been working on _for them_. The mid-level Federation officers suddenly catapulted into positions of authority and the underlings who’d carried out their directives were not entirely to blame for this oversight. The way Federation forces worked at its mid-levels hadn’t really chimed with the behaviour of its upper echelons for decades, certainly long before that very disconnect drove Star-Killer Samor into seclusion with his flagship. Information regarding many covert projects had never been entered into files these mid-level officers could access, and of course the initiatives of agents such as Servalan had often been carried out entirely independently of the central bureaucracy's plans. Clever people might have inferred that this was so and treaded carefully, but no clever people had been in the room at the time.

         When Avon teleported down to what had until recently been the Clone Masters’ home world, he was almost sick with the high dosage of anti-radiation drugs he'd taken as a precaution. He remembered Cephlon and the near-fatal consequences of his time there all too well. Tarrant, younger and trained for space combat, seemed to be doing better – but not by much. Dazed, the two of them wandered through the apocalyptic hellscape, some parts of which were still aflame, looking for anything they might be able to salvage or use. The Clone Masters' cellular generation technology had facets the Auronar had never duplicated: trade secrets that would fetch fortunes and build alliances, if the crew of the Liberator could lay hand on functional equipment. With Cally's basic familiarity with similar technology and Orac's help, they might even come to rudimentarily understand what they found.

         “Avon." Tarrant's voice broke the tense silence as Avon discarded an unsalvageable datapad he'd picked up off the ground. "I'm reading signs of life, coming from that silo there.”

         Avon surveyed it. Tarrant needn’t have specified the building. It was, after all, the only structure in the immediate vicinity that was still standing. "It could be a Clone Master. Who better to tell us what's of use?"

         “It _could_ be someone in need of help,” Tarrant corrected.

         "Oh good _._ Another mouth to feed."

         They forced the door with effort – Vila (who also remembered having nearly died after visiting Cephlon) had refused to come down, even drugged to the gills with anti-rads. Tarrant hadn’t so much as tried to compel him to against his will, not after the Bayban fiasco. Avon pushed the door closed again behind them, and jammed it shut with a metal bar he'd picked up outside to prevent the stressed door from popping open again before they were ready to leave.

         "The silo is radiation-shielded," he said in response to Tarrant's questioning look. "No need to waste that protection."

         The silo had not, however, been proof against the Federation guards, who had presumably come to clean up after the bombing in top-of-the-line anti-rad suits. Avon had thought the door had given too easily, as though the lock had already been forced once and the door had swung shut after someone departed – catching, but only just. He probably wouldn’t have understood what that slight give had meant, if it hadn’t been clear that they weren’t the first visitors since the bombings. The silo was full of dead clones. Not starved or irradiated corpses – someone had ensured their demise more directly. Neither were these the force-grown, intubated adult clones they'd seen earlier. These were the genuine artefact: clones born as infants and reared from childhood.

         Avon stared listlessly at the small dead bodies. Did it make it any better that they hadn't been naturally occurring people? A small, fat, still leg stuck out of a seemingly standard-issue hospital blanket. The face belonging to it had been blown away, but due to the still air of the largely undisturbed silo, there was still a depression on the small pillow where its head had lain.

         No, Avon decided. It did not make it better. He would not have been able to look on Cally’s dead body with any more equanimity than he would have been able to look at Vila’s.

         Perhaps, he thought, these had been clones of some prize-winning tyrant – even of Servalan herself.

         The space where a small skull had pressed remained stubbornly empty. He wanted to brush it flat and remove the dip, the bruise. To make it orderly, to make it not have happened. He didn’t.

         No, Avon supposed that didn't help either.

         "Avon," Tarrant said in a slightly strained voice, and Avon took in a deep breath through his ventilator mask, bracing himself for whatever Tarrant wanted to call his attention to, with a voice like that. He turned, and without his even wishing to appear nonchalant, a wry smile tugged across his face. Of course – it was perhaps the most horrible thing possible. Naturally.

         Servalan had probably been the one to commission the neatly-labelled bank of Blake clones, very likely at the same time she'd commissioned the force-grown edition that had almost secured her IMIPAK. Why not have a contingency plan? You could always dispose of the material later, if you no longer found it useful.

         And dispose of it the Federation troops had, with a special vigour that was almost a tribute to Blake's status. They should have tried to abscond with the clones, which might have grown into valuable propaganda pieces if nothing else, but troops like that didn't think along those lines. Avon was quite glad Blake didn't have to look at this, at what the idea of him had done to these things made in his image. He wasn't looking forward to telling anyone, especially not Cally. He was suddenly strangely glad it was Tarrant here with him – he could rely on Tarrant to hardly feel anything at all.

         "Where is the life sign coming from?" Avon said after a moment.

         Reminded, Tarrant checked the device in his hand, extended a finger, and span in a slow circle, looking up at the end of his turn. He found himself pointing at a woman with a hole halfway through her chest.

         "Not her, I expect," Avon said dryly, shifting her body sideways onto the ruined cot beside the one she was draped over. He had to break her rigor-set fingers to do it. Underneath her was a child, less than a year old. Still connected to a feeding tube and waste system that had, miraculously, survived. It was sleeping.

         "Are there any other life signs?" he asked Tarrant.

         "No. Just this." Tarrant checked the chart at the end of the cot. "It's one of—"

         "Yes. I expected it was."

         Getting someone to die for him, even in infancy – well. It had to be Blake's genetic material, didn't it? And there was the soft curl of brown hair, and the familiar stubborn expression, present even in sleep.

         Avon turned to look at the woman he'd unceremoniously moved, whose fingers he'd broken – one of the Clone Masters, her mouth open in a scream. Perhaps it hadn't been fear; perhaps it had been rage, or determination. She'd been clutching the sides of the cot. She'd not died protecting a child by accident. He wanted to thank her, but that was a stupid impulse. She was, after all, a corpse.

         Still, he thought, there were ways.

         "Help me disconnect the pod from the wall," Avon told Tarrant. “We need the whole apparatus – it’ll protect the child long enough to enable us to teleport, and the machine itself could be exactly what we're looking for."

 

***

 

They managed to teleport up. Avon, riding on adrenal pills that let him ignore what it was doing to his body, for a while anyway, made himself well and truly sick taking three trips down (first with Tarrant and then with Cally when Tarrant begged off) to look for survivors. Ostensibly he was looking for other Clone Masters who could explain the equipment, but they all knew the Clone Masters were almost certainly all dead. Without discussion the _Liberator_ crew agreed not to flag up what Avon was doing.

         They only found three more survivors: two more infants, starving, in a forgotten, protected alcove, and one small child who'd hidden in a closet for days, thin and parched, who said nothing and wouldn't look up when they spoke to her, who only came out when Avon left the room and Cally coaxed her. Then pursuit ships came within scanning range and they had to run, and Avon knew that no one else would survive long enough to justify their return.

         They managed to drop the two infants and the girl off at an orphanage on a neutral planet with good medical facilities. Cally and Tarrant took days to recover from the poisoning; Avon and the remaining infant took a week. Shielded the silo they’d found him in might have been, but the baby was just that – a baby. The radiation that _had_ leaked in through the parted door and the small amount the infant had been exposed to outside the silo in the moment before teleportation had almost been too much for him.

         With Cally and Tarrant ill, the job of bemusedly looking after the other children fell to Dayna, while Vila cajoled Zen into moving for them on the basis of their longer acquaintance. Meanwhile Avon, dog-sick, had pushed the cot containing the last clone of Roj Blake into his room. Together he and the baby lay in the cool dark, trying not to die. Dayna came in sometimes with food for them, and Avon lifted the infant all wrong, and it opened its eyes and took one look at him and bawled. Avon rolled his own eyes and patted it awkwardly until the screaming subsided into annoyed gurgles. The infant fell quiet, and then back asleep.

         He had to ask Zen's food processing units for a suitable formula, and Orac exactly how one _fed_ these things. When the two of them were better he carried the baby nonchalantly onto the flight deck.

         "Aren't we taking that one … somewhere else?" Tarrant asked.

         "No," Avon answered, sitting down and adjusting the infant, who looked around, curious.

         "What shall we call it?" Cally asked, more diplomatically.

         "The child's name is Rojer."

         "Isn't that a little on the nose?" Dayna asked.

         "People are named after their fathers all the time," Vila said with a shrug, defusing things, indicating that perhaps no one should press Avon too hard on this one. "Besides, this one's name is spelled right. That's different. I could never understand why people name their child a nickname."

         "Your own parents having cursed you with Vila, short for Villain?" Tarrant suggested.

         "I'll have you know Vila _was_ my dad's name."

         "I'm not really surprised. Except perhaps by the suggestion that your mother knew who your father was."

 

***

 

         Avon stopped looking for Blake when Rojer was three. Rojer's existence had already prevented him from following up on some of the wild leads that had desperately appealed to him, but that had still left a few ‘sure things’ and several ‘low-risk’ efforts. For example, he hadn’t been able to help himself when a message purportedly from the man himself had come through a few months after they’d first found Rojer. Following ‘Blake’ to Terminal had cost him Cally and the _Liberator_.

         But then, when Rojer was three, Avon had almost lost his hand to a seemingly simple Blake-related information-gathering exercise. As it was he'd done incredible damage to the nerves, batting away a spear aimed at his chest. The spear had sliced through the tendons as it glanced off him, and when he'd tried to pick up Rojer afterwards, Avon’s hand had seized and he'd nearly dropped the child. Avon had managed to catch Rojer with his good hand (Rojer crying out in panic, the sound slicing into Avon) and waited, holding Rojer tightly, until his own heart returned to beating at a normal speed and Rojer stopped sniffling, and he’d thought: this, then, is the end of it. He couldn't put what remained of his crew at risk, and he couldn't get himself killed, not while Rojer couldn't survive without him. Turning the boy in to an orphanage now might easily be a death sentence. There was nowhere someone who was going to grow up to look a lot like Roj Blake would be truly safe – it was a choice between Federation-accessible worlds and entirely uncivilised worlds. And besides, Avon was unwilling to give up Rojer.

         Avon had worried that he'd never be able to use the hand normally again, but time and physiotherapy exercises had restored it fully. He clenched and unclenched his fist as he told himself that Blake was probably dead, as Servalan had said (and thank god she hadn't seen Rojer, who Tarrant had managed to stash safely in a tree for the duration of the encounter on Terminal, for once in his life doing something right). Blake was probably dead, and his son needed him.

         He thought of Blake's clone more in the light of Blake's child (and now his, by right of caring for Rojer, parenting him) than as a copy of Blake himself – after all, everything important about a person was the product of their experiences rather than their genetics, and Roj Blake had decidedly not been rescued from a dead world as an infant and thenceforth lived on the run with Kerr Avon for a father. By fourteen Rojer enjoyed foods Blake had hated, liked vidtapes Vila liked, and had Avon's patience for the sorts of fussy, technical processes that had always driven Blake to extreme frustration. Of course there was enough of a physical likeness, even at this age, to occasionally cause a hard, straining lump to rise in Avon's throat. (He tried not to think about how difficult it might be to look at Rojer as an adult.) Rojer's tone when he was angry made Avon want to laugh with recognition. But Rojer was a distinct person from the man whose genes he carried.

         That said,Avon couldn't help himself from helping nature along the lines it had taken with Blake, and he didn’t particularly try to, either. He was quite aware that the way he treated Rojer was inflected by his knowledge that Rojer was Blake's child. It wouldn't automatically have occurred to Avon to give his own natural progeny political theory and historical novels to read, or, necessarily, to press such a child into arguments about the nature of state power. Rojer, however, ate it up. He seemed unintimidated by the idea of the famous father he'd never met, who was the subject of rumour on most civilised places they went: Blake was back on Earth instigating rebellion in the very corridors of power, he'd fallen to the alien horde, he was on the frontier worlds raising a secret army, he'd been dead for years. Rojer loved the idea of his father, everything he'd stood for, but he was hesitant to ask his dad much about him, because Avon was liable to respond with evasions, sarcasm, outright annoyance, and questions along the lines of ‘Haven't you got gun practice to be getting on with?’

         Indeed, thanks to Avon, Rojer always had some sort of practice or other to be getting on with. To call Avon hyper-vigilant and interested in education would be like suggesting that Dayna liked weapons or that Tarrant liked himself. The list of Things Rojer Had Been Drilled In To Extreme Competence was long and erratic. Avon had totally forgotten chemistry for two years together (and then remembered it with a vengeance and yelled at Orac for not devising a more optimal educational programme), but he'd certainly remembered to shake his crew down for their skill-sets and to force them to tell their secrets to Rojer, who, fair enough, was interested and willing to learn how to pick locks and pilot ships. (He had less aptitude for shooting, and seemed doomed to bare decency – Soolin despaired). Avon's Rojer-Related Paranoia was legendary. Dayna used to joke that she had very little hair because she'd pulled it out over Avon's insistence that a five-year old master escapology and always check entrances and exits when he entered a room, and further insisted that Dayna and Vila help impress this on said five-year old.

         Despite what his dad said about the computer's unparalleled capacities, Rojer felt there had to be better generalist primary-school teachers than Orac (and better teaching assistants than Slave). Rojer was an optimistic child with a great deal of faith in the universe, blighted by tyranny as it was, and thus he had a great deal of faith in this. Also, he did not see the relevance of being good at piano, when wanted criminals were so rarely called upon to play. Yet Avon stood firm. All knowledge was valuable. And indeed, on one occasion when Rojer was ten, his dad _did_ manage to get them out of a tight spot by pretending to be a lounge pianist, and had then proceeded to be smug for days. He hadn’t even set it up. It really wasn’t fair.

         Rojer’s dad was also the sort of dad who would really prefer to be called ‘Father’ or 'Fa' or something awful, but, like his genetic father before him, Rojer stuck to his principles. Rojer also thought that, when it wasn't scary and full of terrible consequences to annoy Avon, it was pretty funny. Mostly it was funny, though sometimes he misread the situation or Avon’s mood and Biblical punishments would kick in. Rojer feared nothing so crude as a beating. Avon believed in creative, keenly awful reprisals: endure an hour's lecture from Orac, rewire Slave, fix Vila's broken toaster. But he could also be silent and hurt and closed and terrible when you upset or disappointed him, which either made Rojer angrier because _he_ was hurt too or made him trip over himself trying to make it up to his dad. And Avon could be viciously fair. He didn't tell you that you'd done a good job when you didn't perform to his high expectations. He told you in graphic detail how and why stupidity and carelessness and bad luck would get you killed. And Rojer _knew_ all that, and did _try_ to follow instructions, even if in his heart he also believed, with a trace of magical thinking, that his dad would never really let anything happen to him.

 

***

 

         Since Rojer could remember, they'd been pulling a few very specialised cons, varied enough in their actual presentation that the patterns weren't immediately obvious to the Federation. The crew would research, leave their protected base (Avon opted to take Rojer with him, even when Rojer was old enough to stay at home by himself, because Avon's parenting style involved constant vigilance), and land on a Federation planet. Once there, they'd probably ruin the banking system in difficult-to-trace-and-thus-to-reverse ways.

         One such scheme involved transferring all the Federation's assets to the population, reserving a comparatively small proportion for themselves. Avon said that the distribution of wealth to the public was cover – it masked them while causing an uproar they could escape in. (Vila snorted at this excuse, apparently finding it feeble. He didn’t snort at the money, though. Even a sliver of a planetary economy was, of course, no mean haul.) The Federation would panic and try to yank back the funds, cracking down hard on security, often blaming their citizens and instigating curfews, even martial law. People would protest, pushed by the upheaval from complacency to consciousness. The planets’ underground rebel cells would call in reinforcements to take advantage of the situation, and Bob's your uncle: another planet for the rebellion. That was something Vila said – Bob’s your uncle. Rojer had an uncle living on Earth, Bas Avon. Orac also said that on the Blake side there'd been an uncle and an aunt, but that they'd both been deported and murdered. No Bobs. Rojer had contemplated asking Vila what the saying meant, but experience told him Vila wouldn't know.

         Since the Andromedan invasion, more planets were going off-script like that. Rumour said that there was some central organising force behind the defections, some secret alliance in the works. But then Orac could find little information, and rumour _also_ had it that Roj Blake had actually been a woman (not so far as Rojer had noticed), so what did rumour know?

         The crew ran a few other cons regularly, but this one, which they called Domino, was Rojer's favourite for several reasons. It was relatively safe, so his dad wasn't a shrill, panicked, grimly-grinning nuisance for weeks on end. The planning and computing work involved challenged Avon. He was very good at it, and Avon liked to be very good at things. In his satisfaction, Avon was more likely to say Rojer could go out to lunch with Soolin instead of going through yet another round of lessons – why not? Did Rojer need any new clothes? Did he want anything in town? Avon would just transfer the (stolen) money now.

         When they ran Domino, Rojer’s dad also sometimes let him help. Rojer was always ready to do some real work for a change. There were small, insignificant, unguarded records depots to break into (or at least the Federation thought them unimportant—the _Scorpio_ crew found good uses for the information). Or Rojer could pretend to be a delivery assistant and scope out buildings and report back. He didn’t look _that_ much like his father yet, especially if Vila did a bit of a make-up job on him and no one looked at him for too long. No one was expecting a teenage Blake, anyway. Rojer was the member of the crew least likely to be recognized. And best of all, Domino was really, properly revolutionary. Even if it was also, a little bit (a significant bit, his dad hastened to reassure him), about getting paid.

         And sometimes, just sometimes, everyone else would go out because the endgame of the con required it, and Rojer (always with a reminder to keep a ready laser pistol on him and to not touch the flight controls in any way, because Avon would _know_ ) would be left alone. He'd lounge around the _Scorpio_ like the prince of all he surveyed, and it didn't even bother him that all he surveyed was largely grey, grey and further grey. He'd play loud music and enjoy privacy and its freedom, which in fourteen years he'd known but little of.

         They'd landed in a wood outside the capitol of Miko five days ago. This morning, stars and schedules had aligned and Rojer had been told to watch the ship. And so when, hours before anyone was due back, he heard the _Scorpio_ 's door being forced open, Rojer felt a bright flare of horror. He barely managed the well-drilled reflex actions of hitting the panic button that alerted the _Scorpio_ crew to an incursion into the ship itself and diving behind the console with a laser pistol (not his, he'd left that across the room – one of his dad's emergency spares from under the desk) before whoever it was entered the flight deck. He wondered if he might be about to die, and knew he should have been careful while left on his own, rather than thoughtlessly reckless, like Dad had always said would wind up getting him killed.

         Of course it might just be one of the crew coming back – but the crew all flicked what Vila called the 'down and safe' button as they returned by force of habit. He'd never known them to forget. Or it might just be some thief – it wasn't exactly easy to survive under the Federation, and _they_ were thieves, and someone like Vila probably wouldn’t hurt a fly (though Dayna and Soolin would, and Vila would leave the fly considerably financially worse off than it had started). Was he really going to _shoot_ an unknown thief, even to disable rather than kill? You shoot first so that they do not shoot _you_ first, his dad's voice hissed in his head.

         Rojer had never killed anyone – his dad had never allowed him to be put in that position. Rojer felt a dim echo of a memory of the sound of shooting and the smell of blood all around him, of being alone with death, and he repressed a sudden impulse to vomit. He flourished his gun in the direction of the door and balanced it on his arm like his dad did. The theatricality of it made him feel safer, because it was like play-acting, unreal. He wondered dizzily if that was why Dad did it – after all, he'd been some stupid computer programmer at first, with no idea what in hell _he_ was doing.

         Rojer waited for the lock he’d picked a score of times for practice to give, hearing the seven clicks he knew by heart. The catch popped. The hatch creaked open.

         First a bit of brown, curly hair poked through the door. Rojer frowned. Which was stupid. Why shouldn't murderers have hair? Then a full head of the stuff, streaked with grey, made an appearance. A man, carrying a gun, stepped into the ship, closing the door behind him.

         "I know someone's in here,” said a surprisingly warm and rich voice. "Terrible teen pop doesn't tend to play itself." It didn't sound like the voice of a murderer. And now that Rojer could see him properly, the man didn’t look like he had the _face_ of a murderer either. His face did look like something else, though. Or rather like someone else.

         "Don't move. I have my gun trained on you. A step and you're dead. Orac, music off,” Rojer said, not bothering to keep his voice down. Orac (key in because it had been being used as a sound system, much to its chagrin) was across the room, and would only be peevish if Rojer whispered and still expected Orac to be able to pick up on the command.

         "Confirm the identity of the intruder,” Rojer ordered, without emerging from his hiding place.

         "Hello, Orac," the intruder said with a strange note of fondness. He'd obviously taken in the room quickly, because he followed it up with "Is that _teleport equipment?_ If anyone's trying to use that system, Orac, would you mind _not_ facilitating them just now?”

         "Greetings, Roj Blake. I shall comply with your request. There. I have responded to you both. Now kindly allow me to return to more important duties! I have almost finished processing the Federation accounts!" A sulky whirr indicated Orac was pointedly turning its attention to other things.

         Rojer wanted to say 'Are you _sure_ , Orac?", but that never went over well, and Orac wouldn't have said it unless it was.

         "Well now," Rojer said, for lack of anything better to say.

         "You sound … familiar,” Blake said. He'd stood where he was, and Rojer could see he'd politely raised his hands, even though Rojer had forgotten to specify that ( _shit_ ).

         "Yeah. That's not coincidental. Look–– Look, I'm going to step out from behind this cabinet. Don't shoot me. Because I still have a gun, and I don't think you want to shoot me. All right?"

         "All right." His fa–– _Blake_ sounded slightly amused

         Rojer slid out and straightened up. "I see rumours of your death have been greatly exaggerated." He’d thought that would sound impressively nonchalant, but immediately felt like a bit of an uncool tit, and, not coincidentally, like that was an awful Dad-ism. Oh well.

         Blake, now a weathered man in his late forties, did a double take. “Orac, can you confirm—?"

         "Yes, that is your clone, and no, he is not a Federation agent. Now _kindly let me work!_ I am also being pestered with several teleportation requests, none of which I am responding to, on your orders! It is highly distracting!" This time what Vila called the 'jog on' whir was at least twice as loud.

         "I don't think of myself as a clone," Rojer pointed out. "Obviously I've had a different life and all that. I tend to think of you more as a parent, who I haven't met." Rojer winced. "That sounded creepier than I intended. What I mean is, we're different people. I mean, you probably can't play piano," he said inanely.

         "Actually I can," his father pointed out kindly. "One never knows when it might be useful."

         Rojer groaned. "Oh for god's sake.”

         "Drop the gun," Avon said from behind the intruder's head. Blake did so immediately, his eyes having gone wide and his whole face having flickered with recognition at the sound of Avon’s voice.

         "How'd you get here so fast without the teleport?" Rojer asked. "You were _miles_ away. I thought it'd be Dayna, if it was anyone."

         "You exaggerate, and I ran," Avon said shortly. He still hadn't come around the side of his captive to see his face.

         "What, in those trousers?" Rojer snickered a little as he said it. This mission had made Avon confident, and confidence, in his dad, tended to bring out elaborate leather outfits with a lot of spiky metal bits. It was pretty embarrassing, really, as he was _ancient_. Well over forty.

         "I see we are due for yet another discussion about safety protocols when you're on your own,” Avon said through his teeth. “Why isn't the teleport functioning? I should never have left you unattended––"

         Rojer rolled his eyes. " _Dad_ , I don't have a gun trained on him because I really don't think it's necessary in this case."

         "Caution is _always necessary_ ," Avon hissed.

         "Avon," Blake said. Avon froze, and his own gun wavered.

         "Told you," Rojer couldn't help himself.

         “Orac––" Avon started, and Orac just did the noise like he’d given up on the lot of them.

         "We already did all that, I'm afraid," Blake said. "On both sides. And I don't need Orac to tell me who you are."

         "No," Avon conceded, taking a deep, slightly shaking breath. "Well now."

         "That too," Rojer muttered. "Look, can we all drop our guns? If Dayna comes in and sees a standoff she might get over-excited and start shooting, and it's pretty much a farce at this point anyway." Rojer dropped his without waiting for permission.

         Avon lowered his gun, automatically casting his eyes around to make sure it was safe to do so. Rojer winced when Avon clocked Rojer's proper gun, the one he'd painted green in a bored moment, on top of Orac, which was itself on the table across the room.

         "At least you managed to hit the recall button and find the spare," Avon said, damning Rojer with faint praise. "Welcome to my humble temporary abode, Blake. Do sit down."

         Rojer dropped back into his chair, and Avon, gun resting lightly in his hand, took a seat. Blake did likewise. Rojer was a bit amused to note that Blake sat down as if this was a diplomatic event or a dinner party, seemingly not at all chagrined by the stand-off. Rojer wondered if he could cultivate being unruffelable himself.

         "I thought you were dead," Avon said to Blake, his tone strangely hollow.

         "Whereas I never believed you were – though despite the indications, I didn’t let myself hope I’d find _you_ here."

         They stared at each other weirdly, and Rojer wondered if perhaps he should make a discreet exit.

         Blake nodded at the gun Avon was still holding. "Do you really think _I'm_ going to try anything? I don't even have a weapon."

         "No," Avon admitted, "I don't. But someone might come through the door, and I can't risk anything happening to Rojer."

         " _Rojer?_ "

         "I thought you were dead," Avon reminded him through gritted teeth.

         "Blake!" someone shouted from the door. Rojer was ruefully impressed to note that Avon already had his gun trained on the newcomer, but it was only Vila. Vila, who must have also run, confirmed coward though he was, to get back to a scene of danger to try and protect Rojer. Rojer was touched, actually. He'd suspected Vila had it in him, but it was nice to know. Thus reminded, Rojer sent the 'false alarm, information forthcoming' all-clear signal to arrest Soolin and Dayna, and whatever leisurely stroll Tarrant was making this way. That wasn't very fair, perhaps – Tarrant was like an older brother to Rojer. A supremely annoying older brother he didn't always like very much, who made a fuss about Rojer touching his things. That kind.

         Vila's entrance incited a flurry of overdue explanations. First they established what had become of Jenna (still with Blake) and Cally (decidedly not still with Avon and Vila), both of whom Rojer knew only by reputation. Blake had clenched his mouth grimly when Avon had simply said "Cally is gone" in a way that didn't brook an explanation, at least not now. Blake had nodded with a resignation that suggested he was not unused to losing people himself.

         It seemed one of the many heads of the rumour-hydra had been right – there _was_ a growing outer-colony Rebel Alliance, and Blake was at its core. He'd come to check up on the cell going around destabilising governments via their banking systems, to see if his people and that cell could collaborate more directly. Blake had hoped they were political in a way he could work with, but he, like Avon, had become fairly paranoid in what Rojer would have called his old age, and had entered the situation with all the prudent caution Avon had ever advised.

         "Why did you come yourself?" Avon asked sharply. Well, Rojer conceded, almost.

         They then had an argument about Blake's tactics and whether he needed to negotiate such an important alliance in person, and how it was a foolish risk, and whoever dropped in on anyone without so much as a message, and how Blake thought he knew by now how to build rebel networks, thank you. Blake railroaded over Avon's objections by simply stating that he thought what he’d decided to do was necessary, in a way Rojer had never seen anyone do before. Rojer wondered if his dad would murder him if _he_ tried to incorporate that as a tactic in their occasional shouting matches.

         Vila said the argument made him feel exactly fourteen years younger, and that he was happy to see Blake, but that he was going to express this by leaving to enjoy a celebratory drink in his cabin, where the shouting wasn’t. Rojer considered this tactic too (though Avon didn’t let him drink, and Vila was scared enough of Avon’s parental wrath that _he_ didn’t let Rojer drink either – though Vila thought it had never done him any harm, at Rojer’s age). Rojer tried to stand to follow Vila, but without looking Avon’s arm shot up and hauled him back into his seat. Avon didn’t entirely trust Vila’s fear of him – not in the face of an occasion like Blake’s confirmed survival.

         "We don't use any equipment with tarriel cells," Blake explained after Avon had subsided into heated, temporarily-beaten-back annoyance (their argument having been not at all interrupted by Rojer’s attempt at flight). "I couldn't be sure the Federation didn't have Orac or something like him. We found out about the _Liberator_ 's destruction, and there were a few security breaches that had me _convinced_ they had him. We've been able to build up an alternate system of non-tarriel computing using only technology from Rebel-aligned worlds. It's made us much harder to hack, as well as provided some support to those economies." That must be why they didn't know much about Blake's activities, Rojer supposed.

         "Impressive," Avon commented. "Who set all that up?"

         Blake hesitated for an instant. "Actually I had a lot of help from Deva. My current computing expert."

         "Ah." The temperature seemed to drop a degree.

         Blake seemed, if anything, a little fondly amused by Avon’s professional territorialism. His lip quirked, he cast his eyes over at Rojer as though inviting him to share in the joke. He changed the subject. "May I ask where you picked up Rojer?"

         "He was a survivor of the Clone Masters' genocide. There were three others, but he was the only one to have anything to do with you. He was an infant when we found him."

         "And you raised him?" There was a note of warmth in Blake’s voice that Rojer couldn’t miss. It was a relief, though Rojer hadn’t understood until he exhaled that he’d been holding his breath against the possibility of Blake feeling violated or horrified by his existence.

         Avon smirked slightly. "I'm not quite finished."

         “Avon—” Blake took a breath, and then shifted the conversation onto safe ground, as though he thought he stood a better chance of appealing to Avon’s sense than to his sentiment. “I came to ask if whoever was pulling these impressive operations would be willing to integrate into our group, to a degree. To offer them a secure base, equipment, strength in numbers. We're about to pull off a massive operation. The rebel-aligned planets are going to declare statehood and invite marginal and Federated planets to join them. We aim to loosen the Federation's hold over the band of planets surrounding the core systems. I want to give the Federation too much to do to push back against us at the start, and to prompt the planets in that band to consider joining us."

         "So you're destabilising their governments to make your own look more attractive," Avon pointed out a bit snidely.

         Rojer felt that was unfair. Blake opened his mouth to counter, but Rojer was already pushing in.

         "You think they really have the ability to make a meaningful choice while they're under total Federation control? They're probably high on pacification drugs for a start. We need to shake things up before they can evaluate their options."

         "Thank you, Rojer." Blake clapped a hand on Rojer's back, and Rojer thought this day was purposeful and amazing.

         " _We?_ " Avon asked.

“Well, of course we're going back with him," Rojer rolled his eyes. "Obviously."

         "Hold on, Rojer,” Blake said calmly. "Avon has a choice. Well, Avon?" His eyes were suspiciously sparkly, and his expression was a carefully restrained grin.

         Avon glared at him. "I accept," he bit out.

         “Good,” Rojer said briskly. “I'll ride with Blake––"

         "You absolutely will not. I don't even know if his craft has seat-belts. Knowing Blake, it doesn’t. We finish this job this afternoon, and then we follow Blake back."

         "Don't you believe in bonding, Dad?"

         "Oh, I certainly do. I believe in you molecularly bonding with a view shield when thrown forward into it at time-distort ten. You and that view shield will form a rich new relationship, which will last until someone scrapes you off."

         "Were you always _grim_ , Dad?"

         "Since I met him," Blake said in an amiable tone. "Unfortunately he's also often correct."

         "I never dreamed I'd hear you say so," Avon said sarcastically.

         "Well," Blake gave Rojer’s dad an odd, somehow especially twinkly smile, "you _did_ think I was dead. These are my coordinates and comm. frequencies." He handed a scrap of paper – they weren't kidding about not using Tarriel cells – to Rojer and stood up, making for the door. "Get in touch when you're ready. And Avon? It's good to see you again."

         When Blake had gone, Rojer glanced over at his dad and caught, for an instant, an expression of almost-youthful extreme pleasure. When his dad turned to him again he was smiling more normally, and Rojer pretended he hadn't noticed the lapse. 

         They finished off the con with a wild degree of flair, even for Dad (Vila murmured something about showing off), and then they were out before the trouble hit. The _Scorpio_ followed Blake's craft towards something that wasn't registering as a planet on any sensors or charts, but which Blake assured them was one, hidden under an artificial ion net. It was a full day's flight. Rojer occasionally checked in on his father for a moment or two, but tried not to be weird about it. Meanwhile, his dad had apparently given up on trying not to be weird entirely, and had retreated into his cabin, only emerging for meals.

         “Is … Avon around?" Blake asked once, slightly lamely, when he commed over to _Scorpio_ to give them the code for some kind of outer defence ring.

         "I'm afraid he's off somewhere," Rojer said, a little embarrassed for them both. "Reading the codes back now––"

         “Remind me to tell your dad how it works,” Blake said as he signed off. “He’ll want to know.”

         When they landed on the base, Avon restarted his conversation with Blake like it hadn't stopped. And perhaps it hadn't, for them. Not for the previous day or for fourteen years. Avon fell into step with Blake while they walked into the main control room of the base. Rojer noticed his parents liked to stand close to one another, but not to touch. They were several paces in front of Rojer, who was trying to walk quickly to keep up, and several more paces in front of the rest of the crew.

         "Then I suppose you will be the leader of this new rebel state?"

         "Is it really a _rebel_ state if it's more legitimate than the Federation? And yes – for the time being. What you said when we were about to attack Earth has turned out to be rather prescient."

         Avon smiled. "I thought it might be."

         "We'll have full elections in a year."

         "And you will duly be elected as full President."

         "It's possible."

         "It's inevitable."

         "Nothing's inevitable, Avon, and no one's indispensable."

         "You are. Apparently."

         "Rojer tells me you've had him reading rather a lot of political theory."

         "Orac had access to your old library lists. I thought it might interest him. Not the entirety of your library lists, of course."

         "No," Blake agreed, and said in an undertone only Avon could make out, "I didn't check out 'Wars of Your Anus' at thirteen in the knowledge that you were going to hear about it and offer it up to a child. But that's what I mean––" his tone rose again, "I'm not indispensable. I’m not even the only Blake in the revolution business."

         "His surname is 'Avon'. The privilege of the person who had to toilet-train him, I think you'll find."

         Blake mock-sighed. "That's fair, I suppose.” He brightened slightly. “And there's still Inga."

         Living on the planet Io, on Blake's base, was good for them all. To no one's surprise but Tarrant's, Vila found a nice woman to bunk with very quickly. Dayna and Soolin were glad of a change of scenery and company, and Tarrant met that woman Vila and Rojer’s parents all knew from the old days, Jenna, and decided to professionally idolise her. He showed this admiration by making a tit of himself trying to outdo her. Did Jenna know he'd graduated top of his class? Jenna had always considered the Federation's programme sloppy and professionally useless. He'd heard of her. She hadn't heard of him. How did she feel about trick flying? Trick flying was a masturbatory game for boys, but it was fine if you liked that sort of thing. Oh. Why did he bring it up? No reason. (Tarrant was quite good at trick flying.) Could he help her crew re-rig these dart fliers? Tarrant didn't know much about engines, really – that was more of a mechanic's job, surely? Jenna was deeply unimpressed by that remark, and some time later Rojer found Tarrant demanding that Orac give him everything it had on dart fliers. At least it kept Tarrant occupied. Rojer saw his dad give Jenna a bottle of something expensive-looking they'd picked up on one of their financial cons 'in recognition of her sterling work'.

         His dad was constantly busy now, and it gave Rojer a little room to breathe. Even better, he had the chance to talk to _lots_ of people here, in a way he’d never previously been allowed to. Among them were children _his own age._ The base had a compliment of hundreds, including families, and the rebels had a fair amount of regular contact with the extremely sympathetic local population as well. Blake had apparently had an incredibly hard time wining them over, convincing them that resisting the Federation and letting his people past their defences was worth their while – but he'd promised additional security shields and delivered, and once convinced, the locals had backed him to the hilt. The Io were like that: slow to trust, and then dedicated once their trust had been won. Rojer had a bit of an advantage there – apparently Blake's son was good by them, and it hadn't taken them that long to warm to him.

         Rojer’s dad, meanwhile, seemed to think Blake had hung the moon – crooked, in the wrong spot, and using a dangerous ladder. He was obviously going to need Avon's help to set it right. Blake seemed to think Avon's advice was irritating, restrictive, and absolutely necessary before he could make any major decision. Rojer wished he had a running count as to how many of their sentences to him began with some variant of 'your father thinks'. Almost all Blake's meetings were also Avon's meetings now, and Blake had a _lot_ of meetings. Blake’s Chief of Staff and technical lead, Deva, was happy to defer to Avon's admittedly superior technical skills. Deva wasn't much for professional jealousy, and he largely agreed with Avon on matters of policy and implementation – it wasn't so much a demotion as a merger. One day Blake introduced Avon as his Chief Advisor and his top computer expert, and Avon blinked and went with it.

         The presence of Avon and his people had moved up the entire time scale for the big push by a logarithmic degree. How swiftly the rebellion’s plans had changed and accelerated after the _Scorpio_ contingent’s arrival served to baffle intelligence operatives tracking the rebels at various removes.

         Even with all that going on, Blake still made substantial time for his newly-discovered son. Blake explained what they were doing to Rojer with surprising patience (Avon made a snide comment about how Blake’s willingness to share his plans meant he really _had_ matured with the years). Rojer appreciated how _good_ Blake was being about all of this – he didn’t have to be. Blake was careful to ask Rojer what he thought and why, and he was challenging and sympathetic in a different way than Avon had ever been. He was exciting to talk to. Rojer supposed that was the charisma that had built disparate people into a unified rebellion. Without trying to imitate Blake, Rojer caught himself picking up a lot of his verbal tics and mannerisms – though Avon had looked horrified and smacked his hand away from his mouth when Rojer had thoughtlessly bit his knuckles while thinking about a complicated choice.

         "I tolerate that horrible bat-wing jacket he gave you for your birthday on sufferance, but not _that_."

         His parents didn't seem to be … together, for all they barely ate a meal apart. Or spent _any_ time at all apart really, between work and time with Rojer (frequently combined – neither Blake nor Avon had any compunctions about dragging Rojer fully into the safer side of the family business). This was confusing because, based on how his dad had talked about Blake when he'd been 'dead', Rojer had come to some conclusions. Of course he'd known better than to bring them up at the time, and so he'd asked Vila, who'd judiciously considered and then laid out the respectable sum he'd have bet on their having been a _thing_ of some description.

         But now here they were, and he and Avon had one set of living quarters, while Blake had another. No one had ever spent the night or anything. But even if his parents hadn't been together before … surely now they could talk about it? Do something about it? Rojer didn't _know_ that they loved one another, but sometimes his father said ' _Avon_ ' in this fond, exasperated groan, and sometimes his dad looked at his father like he couldn't _believe_ he was alive. And neither of them was stupid. They had to know how they themselves felt, at least.

         Maybe the problem was him. Maybe they thought it would be too weird, because they had a child together, and what would Rojer think about it? He was a thing they had in common and a wedge between them at once. Perhaps they couldn't start or resume a relationship because it would confuse the roles and boundaries involved in being people who worked together, his parents, and people with a long history. Maybe they'd done things out of order, having him by accident before they’d talked properly about anything, and so were giving it up for a bad job. That wouldn't be fair to them, if it were true.

         "I wouldn't mind it if you dated someone," Rojer said casually to Avon one morning while handing him a cup of coffee (in the ‘Universe's Best Dad’ mug Vila had once suggested as a present, and which Avon had received with a series of bizarre, displeased facial expressions, but kept and used for seven years).

         "I wouldn't either," Avon said flatly, "but I don't think it likely." And that had been the end of it.

         Blake he knew less well, and thus found slightly more intimidating. Giving _him_ permission to date seemed out of the question. If Rojer himself was an issue for them, there didn't seem to be much he could do about it. Which … sucked, frankly, if it meant he was ruining his parents' lives. Because he loved Dad, annoying as he could be, and he thought he might love his father if they gave it a while, and he didn't want to be a burden, and he had been all his life (someone had always had to stay behind to look after him, and they'd been short-handed as it was).

         "That is just what children are," Avon had said when Rojer had tried to explain once why he felt bad about being a drain on the group. "And you can hardly compete with Vila in that category." Which hadn't exactly helped.

         Life on Blake’s base wasn't all roses. Avon was used to having his own way about most arrangements, and always about Rojer. Taking a walk into the village, just the two of them, Blake mentioned that some of the other children on the base attended a school, and that if Rojer wanted to start going, he could. Blake had asked the head teacher, who'd rushed to make it possible. Rojer mentioned his intention to start immediately to his dad (who he’d assumed knew all about it) while the three of them were eating dinner together that night. Anything was better than Orac, for a start, and his dad hadn't had much time to oversee his work and make it more interesting since the move.

         As it turned out, Blake had told Rojer it was up to him without mentioning the subject to Avon, who dabbed his lips with his napkin, pushed his chair back, said “Blake, a word”, and walked into the bedroom in the full expectation that Blake would follow him. Blake sighed and did. The door closed, and muted voices, rising to shouting after a minute, came through. Nervously, Rojer picked at his dinner. Fifteen or so minutes later, they both returned. Avon's face was pinched, and Blake looked uncharacteristically chagrinned. They sat back down. Avon gave Blake a ' _well?_ ' expression.

         "I'm sorry I offered that to you as though it was a fait accompli, Rojer. Avon has every right to survey the school's educational programme, and to assure himself that he's satisfied with it before you make your choice. I think he _will be_ ," Blake's voice rose slightly, and Avon coughed pointedly, causing it to drop again, "but, as I say, I spoke out of turn."

         "I really want to go, Dad,” Rojer said simply.

         "I know you do. And if possible – and this may involve some additional lessons with Orac, or specialists, or my putting aside dedicated time to round out the curriculum–"

         “ _Our_ putting aside the time," Blake put in, and Avon blinked slightly but hardly paused.

         "If _possible_ , you will go."

" _Thank you_ , Avon," Blake said in a tone that had a trace of sarcasm and humour, but which was largely polite. His lip quirked with fond exasperation, and he looked at Avon with an unusual degree of significance.

         “Thanks, Dad," Rojer added.

         Avon looked away from them both and changed the subject. And go Rojer did, though he had to do a fair amount of extra work to meet Avon's requirements. He also had to listen to a lot of muttering from Avon about the sort of elite schools he and Blake had gone to, and he had occasion, via extra lessons his parents both decided were necessary (how his dad had crowed at _that_ triumph over Blake), to find out how good his father was at history.

         All of that was nothing to the Battle of the Day Trip. Blake had to go off planet on a short run to the neighbouring, rebel-controlled system. Due to the base's secrecy, the supplies they needed couldn't be delivered directly to them. Instead, the rebels used designated rendezvous points. Blake needed to pick up some equipment from one of these way stations, from a trusted supplier who dealt exclusively with Blake himself. It was only going to take a few hours, and Rojer, free from lessons for the day because his father, if not his dad, believed in rest periods, spontaneously asked if he could come along. Blake had said it was a good idea, and had, to his credit, remembered to leave Avon an obvious note, pinned to the top of his personal data feed.

         It ended up being a great day. They were out of communication range for most of it, given the equipment they had on them. The pick-up had gone easily, and the two of them had wound up exploring the city, eating lunch and then dinner. The planet had been settled by colonists from Earth's Philippines, and had been selected for its primary archipelago's climactic similarities. They'd flown in over some seriously cool terrace farms (interspersed by waterfalls), there was a great beach, and the food had been amazing, so they'd decided to bring some ingredients back. That had involved visiting an active market, which had been an attraction in its own right. Blake had seen some of this before, but hadn't been able to justify spending much time here himself. Apparently Rojer's interest, and the short conversation they'd had on the way over about how Rojer had spent most of his life in a cramped, shoddy base or in heavily built-up cities pulling cons (and most of the intervals between cooped up in the _Scorpio_ ), had been enough to make Blake feel like his own pleasure wasn't a selfish waste of his time, if it was also for Rojer's benefit.

         The trip had ended up taking something like fourteen hours all told. Rojer fell asleep on the flight back, and his father gently shook him awake when they were home.

         "We're here," Blake said, and a slightly grim note in his voice made Rojer struggle to open his eyes a little faster.

         In the sparsely populated flight-control bay, working on a datapad and watching them through the front view-screen of their ship, was Avon. If looks could kill, Blake would have been shot multiple times.

         "I'll tell him how it was my fault," Rojer said. His father looked bemused, like it was only now dawning on him why Avon might be that angry. To be fair, Rojer had forgotten about it too.

         "No," Blake murmured, "I'll take this. I’m the adult, and it was my decision. If he has anything to say to you after he's through with me, he can probably handle it in the morning."

         Blake got out of the cockpit and walked towards Avon, arms up and open. "Avon," he said in an even, conciliatory tone. "Did you get my note?"

         Avon laughed in a way that suggested that was hilarious, and simultaneously totally unamusing. "Oh yes. I got your note. Where do you want to have this conversation?”

         "Not in front of everyone else, preferably."

         "No," Avon smiled nastily, "of course not. It wouldn't do for them to see––" but he checked himself, turned on his heel, and stalked off. "Go to bed Rojer," he called over his shoulder without looking back. "I'll deal with you later."

         "Good luck," Rojer whispered to his father. "I'm really sorry."

         Blake waved a dismissive hand and followed Avon, who decided on Blake's quarters as their battleground. He turned to Blake, expecting that he would need to be let in.

         "You have access," Blake said tiredly. "In case of emergencies."

         Refusing to be in any measure mollified, Avon said, "Right," cleared his throat, and said, "Open."

         The door had hardly closed when Avon said, "A _note_."

         "I'm sorry."

         "What are you sorry for?"

         "I don't know yet, Avon.” Blake's voice rose. "Why don't you tell me?"

         "You took him off planet without asking me––"

         "He was with me the whole time. It's a safe, rebel-controlled planet, ask anyone––"

         "––for fourteen and a half hours. And you didn't even bother to take long-range personal communicators."

         Blake laughed a little, surprised. "But those things are the size of Orac!"

         "Did you even carry weaponry?"

         "On a peaceful planet? As a matter of fact, I did have a gun––"

         "You. _You_ had _a_ gun. I have tolerated your thoughtlessness and irresponsibility for years. Even when it risked my own life. Even when it _did_ get people killed. But if you do anything to expose Rojer to this kind of danger again, so help me Blake, I will kill you myself."

         Blake blinked like he'd been slapped. Avon's nostrils flared. He was milk-pale, and he seemed to be practically quivering with rage. "Has it ever occurred to you," Blake said in a dangerously pleasant tone, "that you might be smothering Rojer with your obsessive paranoia? I expect it has, because if you have to use _Gan's death_ to carry your argument, you must know it's not a particularly good one."

         "On the contrary," Avon said coldly, "I think it conveys precisely the point I am trying to make."

         “Dammit, Avon, you're _right_ , I _should_ have asked, but I'm his parent too!"

         Avon laughed outright. "Where were you, then, Blake? Where were you for fourteen years, when I had to figure out how to raise a bloody child, me of all people, without so much as a primary school I could trust not to turn him in? You are his parent like Slave is Zen. Did you even look for us?"

         Avon hadn't asked before because he hadn't wanted to know, if the answer wasn't the right one.

         "I looked for you for _years_ ," Blake hissed. "As best I could when you had Orac and I had _nothing_. I never gave up hoping that you were all right. I _never_ resigned myself to your death. I set all this up, I was waiting for you!"

         “ _You_ went off radar,” Avon accused him.

         “You know I had no choice!” Blake shouted. “ _You_ stopped looking!”

         “For _Rojer!_ I _had to keep him safe_.”

         Avon remembered a silo full of infant clones of the man in front of him. Excepting Rojer, they'd all been shot execution style. Some of the bodies had been interfered with. He remembered how Rojer had survived, pressed under the corpse of a Clone Master. Barely. Lucky. Just that. Just thin, stupid luck. And now Blake, Blake of _all_ people, fought him on this, had the sheer audacity––

         "If you'd seen where he came from––" Avon broke off. His tone was flat and affectless. He _wanted_ Blake to understand, but he didn’t know if he could bear to make him.

         But Blake said, "I know, Avon,” with surprisingly gentleness. "Tarrant told me what it was like. What you did. He said it might come up, and that he didn't think you should have to be the one to tell me."

         Avon, with some surprise, was forced to credit Tarrant with more kindness than he'd ever suspected Tarrant possessed.

         "I won't do something like that again without asking you properly. I'll take better precautions. I'll be better about time. I don't think backpacks full of radio equipment are necessary. Does that address those aspects of your concerns?"

         Avon hesitated, and then said, "Yes. Those aspects."

         Blake sighed tiredly, willing to work with him but also finding the process difficult. “I can’t _believe_ I didn’t know you’d be angry. I used to know you better than this. I’m sorry – I feel like we’ve fallen out of step. And I _am_ relearning you, but I expected it all back in an instant.” Blake cleared his throat. "What else are you angry about?”

         Avon laughed, with a bit of a rasp to it because what Blake said had touched him and hurt, like sweet pressure applied to a bruise. "Where to start?”         

The carelessness with which Blake treated his own life came to mind, but what could Avon say about that that wasn't essentially an excerpt from the speech Deva constantly gave Blake, with Avon's chorus of approval? What were Deva’s cautions but a light reprise of Avon’s own themes? Deva focused on Blake's importance to the rebellion. Avon supposed he might make a personal appeal: if you really die, I will go on living because Rojer needs me, but I do not know if I could bear it again. And it would be worse this time, because I would know for certain.

         But they weren't talking about that. No. They spent the better part of almost every day together, and they ate together, and Blake talked to him about his plans more than he ever had on the _Liberator_. It was all very satisfying, to the extent that it was, effectually, the work and the privileges of being Blake's partner. And gnawingly dissatisfying, to the extent that he was _not_ Blake's partner. Some part of Avon wanted this argument to be about him and Blake, rather than him and Blake and their child. He _wanted_ to talk about, but could not begin to discuss, Blake's safety--what Blake's fourteen-year absence had done to _him_ , Rojer aside.

         He was _furious_ with Blake for having made decisions about Rojer without consulting him. But he also wanted to Blake to _want_ not to make him angry. Not just because Avon's anger was inconvenient for him, but because Blake loved him, and tried to understand what made Avon a miserable, furious, anxious wreck and tried to actively avoid doing it. Avon wanted not to be a nagging annoyance Blake placated. He wanted Blake to want him, with the desperate physical intensity that made Avon want to watch Blake sleep at night to make sure he was still there, and that still, after all these years, made Avon want almost nothing more than he wanted Blake's large hands on him, for Blake to say his name and hold his wrists down and open him up and fuck him. Blake chewed pens in meetings and Avon thought, _Kiss me_. Blake grinned at him and his breath caught. Blake touched an assistant's arm, Rojer's hair, absently caressed the arm of a chair, and Avon thought, _That's mine, surely that's mine_. Blake showed some affection for an old friend, warmer and more open than what he guardedly gave Avon, and Avon could practically feel himself salivating. He had never had Blake, not really, and he felt it as a crippling, permanent hunger, keener now for Blake's near-constant presence.

         Avon felt Blake should thank him for what he'd done for Rojer, even as he thought he'd laugh at Blake if he tried. While raising Rojer had been in part a way of loving Blake when Blake was dead, Rojer and Avon's relationship also had nothing to do with Blake. If Blake tried to say something like 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant', Avon thought he might punch him.

         So what did Blake owe him now, for saving and raising this child? His heir, Avon supposed. Nothing, or everything? If Avon made his desire unmistakable, would Blake agree to sleep with him because he felt he owed Avon that much? Because Avon had done all this, had waited for him, and it was really too pathetic not to humour him? Avon didn't even know that Blake understood that Avon loved him. To Avon it was embarrassingly obvious, but Blake had managed to miss the obvious before. Once, right before they’d been separated, Blake had told Avon that he thought Avon hated him, and the memory and the guilt of it had sat in Avon for years. For all he knew, Blake might still think it, really.

         Blake, on the other hand, was as seemingly straightforward, and as actually subtle and difficult to read, as he'd ever been on the _Liberator_. Avon couldn't make any kind of confession, because if Blake was repulsed, or sympathetic but disinterested, or even willing to fuck him for the wrong reasons (mild diversion, obligation, because he needed Avon kept sweet for the sake of the cause), then Avon couldn't walk away. They had a plan and a child to consider, and Rojer wanted and deserved a relationship with Blake, even as Blake wanted and deserved to know and be with Rojer. If Avon said he loved Blake and Blake didn't love him (and why should he, really? What had Blake ever done to suggest he even particularly liked Avon, rather than just found him useful?), then Avon would have to stay at Blake's right hand. To endure Blake's charitable pity. He might even have to endure Blake using the fact that Avon loved him to manipulate him, because Blake was perhaps the best man Avon had ever known, but he was far from the nicest. If the situation between himself and Blake went terribly wrong, the hideous discomfort of it would sour things for Rojer. Avon would try for maturity, for everyone's sake, and wind up at 'arctic chill interspersed with overexposed, aching longing’. He knew himself. He was capable of a great many things, and conducting himself magnanimously in such a situation wasn't among them.

         He’d always gotten on well with his family on Earth, but nevertheless, in his entire life, only two relationships had been lastingly, overwhelmingly important to Avon. He no longer counted Anna – not just because she'd betrayed him, but because in retrospect he realised how much of what she'd done to him had been an exercise of her professional skill, and how much his own naiveté had enabled her efforts to succeed. If he'd met Blake before Anna, if he'd known what loving someone was like, Avon supposed he wouldn't have fallen for its laboratory-grown imitation. It had been an efficacious copy, at least in certain respects Anna had found useful to cultivate: he'd have died for Anna. But he could imagine almost nothing he wouldn't do to keep Rojer and Blake alive (only their own strong senses of morality, and how they’d hate attrocities being done in their name, would have stayed him). And he refused to sacrifice one of those relationships to save the other – to lose his closeness with Rojer, or to lose Blake's respect for him, Blake’s presence in his life, and his own ability to protect Blake and forward all three of their interests in his current position.

         At least it wasn't as bad as it might have been. At least Blake wasn't _with someone else._ Avon didn't know what he would have done with that.

         "Is it," Blake suggested, breaking into Avon's thoughts, "that I've spent so much time with Rojer lately? Do you worry I'm replacing you in his life?"

         Avon was surprised and then annoyed to realise that he _did_ worry about that. A little. He'd not even suspected it, and Blake had seen it. It was awful that it was true, that he hadn't known it, that someone else had seen, and that that someone had been Blake himself. Blake, larger-than-life famous, confident, and capable of charming or moving almost anyone, when he could be bothered to do it. Of course Rojer would see all that and correctly sum up the relative value of his parents. He wasn't stupid.

         "Because Rojer adores you," Blake continued. "He talks about you constantly." Blake’s voice was thick with conviction. “You mean the world to him.”

         "You spend a great deal of time with him," Avon said absently, considering that he was also jealous of _Rojer_ for being the object of Blake's attention and affection. Jealous of his own child. Pathetic.

         "I spend practically all my time with _you_ , Avon," Blake said, and there was a strange pleading edge to it. Avon supposed he _was_ being unreasonable, and that he knew his son, and that he knew Rojer cared about him. Rojer was loyal to a fault, and responsive to love. Rojer knew his dad loved him, and so would love him in kind with steadfast, belligerent devotion.

         "It's not as if you'd have wanted to come with us," Blake said in a lighter tone, as though the idea was absurd. Avon gave him a _look_ , and Blake cleared his throat. "Ah. I … wouldn’t have thought it was your sort of place."

         "Yes," Avon drawled. "I hate tropical paradises. Food. Relative safety. Any break from the intricate and irritating process of planning the logistics of a revolution. Rojer's company." _Yours._

         "That was stupid of me."

         "The notion is in good company – you have a great many idiotic ideas." Avon was too tired to stay angry, and he said it with more exhaustion than viciousness. "It can't be helped."

         “Yes, it can. Avon, we can all go somewhere together – to that planet, or Lindor. We still have to close the negotiations with Tyce in person. Anywhere you like."

         " _You_ would allow room for that in your busy schedule, glorious leader?

         “Oh, I think I can spare a weekend, as an apology. Don't you?" Blake smiled a particularly nice smile, and Avon thought it wasn't fair that Blake had this leverage over him, in this argument and always. It wasn’t fair that he couldn't imagine knowing Blake and not being brutally, sweetly, dedicatedly in love with him.

         "I'll consider it. Goodnight, Blake."

         "Goodnight, Avon." Blake sounded sad and tired and Avon felt momentarily guilty that he'd done this to Blake when Blake had just wanted to spend a nice day with Rojer, to give his time to the boy. In all the years he and Blake had known each other, this was probably about all Avon had ever managed to give Blake: an often not-quite deserved harangue (or a richly deserved and largely pointless one), and a headache at the end of the night.

         Avon turned on his heel and left. He looked in on Rojer. Avon watched him for a few minutes, and then Rojer, apparently less soundly asleep than advertised, murmured, "Dad you're letting the light in. I told you not to watch me sleep anymore when I was eight. It's creepy and I'm all right. Yell at me tomorrow."

         Avon smiled. “Goodnight, Rojer. I'm glad he didn't manage to get you killed."

         "I love you too. _Goodnight_ , Dad."

         Avon let the door swing shut and went to bed. In the morning he masturbated silently in the shower, thinking about how Blake was still especially attractive when he was angry (waste time with Blake not, want not), and dressed. He took a coffee from Rojer and told Rojer that he knew what he'd done wrong, if he thought about it. He also admitted to Rojer (far easier than saying it to Blake) that he depended on Rojer to check his father's excesses, for own his sake and for Blake's. When Avon wasn't there, Rojer would have to at least _consider_ what Avon might have wanted done. Then he'd told Rojer his punishment would be piano-related, because he'd been neglecting that recently. Too late, Avon remembered that their piano was stuck back on Xenon Base, but before he could change his mind, Rojer was groaning and saying he'd have to borrow his father's roll-out portable.

         "Blake plays?" Avon asked.

         "Didn't you know? I wouldn't have thought Father had a _mole_ you didn't know about."

         "If your father's organisation had a mole, I very likely would know about it,” Avon said.

         He glanced sideways, wondering if Rojer knew he was in love with Blake. For his own sanity's sake, Avon decided that he didn't, and was incredibly grateful yet again that he'd never (even at his most maudlin) confessed anything along those lines either to Rojer or to anyone from his crew.

         And then he fell into step with Blake in the corridor, and they sat through the day's first meeting. Avon talked about computerised security systems with Vila and Deva. He also occasionally glanced at Blake's long, powerful fingers, and thought alternatively about sucking them and the ludicrous and somehow simultaneously arousing idea of Blake playing something for him.

         Not two days later, Avon, Rojer and Blake watched a munitions supply crate get unloaded and cataloged. As they did so, Blake recognised the slight chemical smell of a pressure grenade compressing. Quicker than he could speak, his eyes scanned the material and found it. Without consciously evaluating the situation, he realised Rojer was nearest, shouted at everyone to get down, and threw himself at and over Rojer, pushing them both out of the impact radius. He hoped.

         The bomb shrieked – and didn't fully activate. Blake could hear Avon shouting for the weapons specialist on deck, demanding to know whether the bomb was still live, if it had been packed poorly, whether this was sabotage.

         "They couldn't have known Blake would be here when we opened it," Asha, the team forewoman, pointed out.

         "Look at that," Dayna said, because it was her shift. "The alloy's weak. It's just this one, but it's cracked, right here. The safety features worked though – it leaked all its ignition primer. It's a dud. You got lucky, kiddo." She grinned in Rojer's direction.

         Blake got to his feet, and pulled Rojer up too.

         "Are you all right?” he asked Rojer, patting him down brusquely, as though there was anything to dust off him.

         "Sure," Rojer nodded, trying to sound brave. "Nothing happened, after all." He was very like Avon at times, and Blake loved that in him, and he had nearly lost him.

         "You just had several kilos of old man fall on you," Blake said with a shaky laugh. "I wouldn't call that nothing." He kissed Rojer's forehead and pulled him into a tight, relieved hug, ruffling his hair. Rojer returned the hug, shaken.

         “Thanks,” Rojer murmured into his father’s jerkin.

         “Don’t mention it.”

         No wonder, Blake thought, Avon had gone mad when he'd taken Rojer off-world. Parenting was _terrifying_. In a matter of a few months he'd come to love his son more deeply than he'd realised.

         With an embarrassed laugh, he Rojer go, and turned. Avon was looking at him and Rojer like he really wanted to say something he shouldn't, and so was saying nothing at all. His eyes were huge in his too-pale face, and Blake could tell he was also rattled. He wanted to tell Avon not to worry, but Avon knew that, and would find the comment embarrassing and pointless. He wanted to hold Avon like he'd held Rojer, but Avon wouldn't have welcomed it. He wanted, as he usually did after narrowly surviving something, to have reassuring, life-affirming, giddily-relieved sex with Avon, but he'd never actually been able to do that, so this missed opportunity only hurt as much as all the rest did.

         "Dayna, can you deal with this mess?" Blake asked, and she brightly said of course she could.

         With a claw-like hand clenched on his son’s shoulder, Avon steered Rojer towards the canteen for a cup of tea to brace him (which was a little ironic, considering that Avon looked like _he_ might faint). Blake got one for himself as well, and one for Avon. He wanted to touch Avon's hand reassuringly when he passed him the mug, and he settled for lightly, seemingly accidentally brushing it. Avon's bravado was either attractive or exasperating, but Avon's flashes of naked feeling made Blake want to properly talk to him or comfort him or fuck him, if he couldn’t have a few of those at the same time.

         But he couldn't ask that of Avon, who had never responded to any of his many, many hints. Avon either didn't want him, or did and didn't want to do anything about it. Blake thought that if Avon was worried about Rojer and how he or anyone else might react, then that really shouldn't be an obstacle. There were potential problems, but _surely_ they could work around them. If Avon thought Blake would lose him lightly to any form of awkwardness or tension, then he hadn’t paid attention during the first years of their acquaintance. Blake would be delighted to reassure him on that score.

But if Avon thought otherwise – say, wanted Blake but thought Blake was too much trouble, then that was his (painful, stupid) decision, and Blake … would have to respect his choices and accept it.

         Or perhaps, despite flashes of apparent interest that nearly had Blake convinced he was _right_ and that Avon _did_ want him, Avon just didn't consider Blake in that light. And admittedly, trying to think through reasons Avon should or would be interested didn't turn up a great wealth of supporting evidence to Blake's mind. Blake didn’t take Avon’s decision to care for Rojer, and what a good father he’d been to the boy, as a proof of personal affection. He’d always known Avon was a good man, and very good to people he cared for, even as he’d always wanted to be an object of that interest and care.

         "Are you all right?"

         Blake looked up, but then noticed the young woman asking the question hadn't been speaking to him, but to Rojer. He remembered her now – a Silmareno girl, Porra. No parents – they’d been minor nobles among their people, and killed in a re-education camp. Porra was a year older than Rojer, and had come to Blake’s people for protection, ready to fight. They'd let her stay and said she could help with work around the base (her portion of the chores rota), and could think about fighting and whether she wanted to do any when she was a little older. Blake wasn't in the business of training up child soldiers.

         "I heard about the bomb,” Porra said.

         Rojer waved his hand dismissively. "Nothing happened. A dud. Just catching my breath, that's all."

         Her eyes narrowed. "An accident?"

         "If Dayna says so, then that's what it was," he said firmly, and Blake realised he was reassuring her. And that – oh god. Rojer had a girlfriend.

         He glanced over at Avon, who, judging by his expression, was apparently experiencing the same realisation. How did they not know this? But then the relationship was clearly still in the very early stages. Porra was awkwardly trying to leave, and Rojer was awkwardly trying to stretch the conversation out, and she was laughing and going with a promise to talk to him later.

         Rojer said, quite casually, "Do you mind if I have dinner in the canteen with Porra tonight?"

         "Avon, do _you_ mind?" Blake said politely.

         Avon didn't answer directly. He grilled Rojer hard about Porra, and eventually conceded dinner, with a decided and firm curfew. Rojer left because his classes were starting soon, and once he was out of the room Blake groaned and buried his head in his hands.

         "Precisely," Avon agreed. "You were right, incidentally, when we argued about Rojer going off-planet with you. Rojer is going to be an adult soon. He must be prepared to be one. Which he cannot be, if I am eternally looking over his shoulder. Sooner or later, I won't be able to do so."

         "That's interesting. Back in the shuttle bay I was thinking I hadn't properly appreciated your paranoia." Blake smiled ruefully. This had been the discrepancy, the thing he hadn’t understood. Now that the fear of losing Rojer had been violently impressed on him, he could understand and enter into the texture of Avon’s thoughts again, could anticipate them. Blake fell back into the shared rhythm of them with relief.

         "How many years do you expect it will take you to learn that I’m always right?” Avon smirked, but the expression drifted off his face as his thoughts looped about around. “I … suppose I'll have to relinquish a degree of control. But it’s difficult. And I don't feel I've done all I can."

         "I don't think anyone _does_ feel that, even in less dangerous circumstances than ours. You've done well by him, Avon. You've given him every advantage possible."

         "Have I?" Avon leaned back, watching the door Rojer had left by, lacing his fingers around his cup. "Advantages were always in short supply, you see. He'll never have gone to schools you and I did. He'll never have grown up normally, for whatever that is worth."

         Blake thought Avon’s worry was unfounded. Whatever hardships there had been, no other child he knew had as brilliant and committed a father as Avon, had been so thoroughly trained and cared for. Avon’s crew clearly also cared about Rojer. But if Avon was insecure about this, then it wouldn’t help to dismiss his concern as ridiculous.

         "Alphas hardly grow up normally as it is, but I take your point.” Blake’s expression turned playful, prodding Avon out of his mood – Blake knew it was all too easy to slump, after the adrenaline that flooded you in a crisis drained. “If we get to Earth, we’ll re-establish the old universities. If we do it quickly enough, say in the next few years, Rojer can even be a Cambridge man. That should quell your apprehension that you've given him inferior credentials."

         Avon laughed. "Ah, but will he get in?"

         "Well, you’ve suggested he _would_ be the President's son."

         "Nepotism, Blake? I really have made an impression on you."

         "Well," Blake considered, "for _Rojer._ Not that he'd _need_ it, really. You've drilled him to perfection, made a silk purse out of the sow's ear of my genes."

         Avon smiled over his mug. "Oh, you always had your moments."

        

***

 

         Six months after the _Scorpio_ crew's integration into Blake's army, the rebel forces were finally ready to go over the top. The _Scorpio_ crew had trained several teams of Blake's people, and (excepting Avon and Rojer) had split up and gone with them for week-long economy-toppling missions. When they'd returned, rebel-aligned fleets using non-tarrial computing systems rendezvoused at Albion. The planet's status as a colony that had bucked the Federation, with Blake's help, was lost on no one.

         In the stateroom of a palace the original colonists had built to house their native government, a palace that the Federation had subsequently taken over and used as their own headquarters, the elected representatives of fifty systems pledged themselves to a federal government under Blake's leadership. Independent powers, including Teal and Vandor, formally recognised and allied themselves with this government. The Albion delegation made special mention of Blake and his people's assistance during the coup that had brought about their liberation, and particularly commended Avon's having risked his own life and worked down to the wire to save their people. (It was the first Rojer had heard of it, though he'd known there was some reason Albion thought his parents were worth sticking their necks out for.) On the palace's balcony, Blake gave a speech that was illegally broadcast across the Federation, commending what the rebel forces had already accomplished together and stating his hope that more planets would come to their cause, would recognise their strength and take the chance of fighting back, and that within a decade Earth itself would be as free as Albion, Lindor or Silmareno. The balcony had been crammed with grinning supporters, diplomats, and a young man who looked a lot like Blake himself. Avon had stood behind his son, and had wrapped his hands around Rojer's shoulders as they listened to the speech Avon had proofread.

         Afterwards they'd retired into the salon that the hospitality committee (just Deva and Vila, but they'd insisted on an official name) had prepared. The atmosphere was celebratory and, thanks to Vila, boozy. Thanks to Deva, the festivities were also appropriately provisioned with food, rubbish bins, and sober guards.

         Jenna caught Blake in a hug. "I wish Cally could be here to see this. Her and Gan both."

         Blake didn't say anything, just patted her back, a little moisture gathering in his eyes.

         Jenna coughed, bringing herself back to her normal collected state. She spread her arms. "How about it, Avon?"

         Avon gave her a look. "We've managed over a decade without these displays. I see no reason to break our streak."

         "Ah, but it is a a rather special occasion.” Blake had a gleam in his eye.

         “It'sa party, Avon!" a soused Vila protested, grabbing Avon from behind and squeezing him. Avon looked like an affronted cat, and clenched his hands to stop himself from scrabbling at Vila and saying, 'Get off me, get _off_ me' like a child.

         Jenna laughed like she might choke.

         "Good old Albion, eh?" Vila said contemplatively, intoxication giving him a melancholy, meditative turn as Avon weaselled out of his embrace. "Brings back memories. Blake almost got me killed here. More of the same, really, I don’t know why I even mention it. Avon took his teleport bracelet off so we couldn't rescue him when the timer dropped down under a minute, so he could keep working, and Blake wouldn't let _me_ go up until what, thethirty second mark? And he didn’t even leave then. When _did_ youleave, Blake?"

         "Does it matter?" Blake asked, as though it didn't. "It was years ago."

         "You should have got out when the time-window you specified elapsed," Avon said with surprising sharpness.

         Blake arched an eyebrow. "Touché."

         Rojer's second-cousin Inga spotted him, rushed over and caught him up in a tight hug, kissing his cheeks. She'd been leading one of the fleets that was about to deploy through the border corridor and he hadn't seen her for weeks, though before that she'd been very serious about becoming an 'aunt' and heavy on the chats and book clubs. All Blakes seemed to be big on physical affection and discussing whether Zapatista tactics might be successfully adapted to counteract Federation incursions onto non-human worlds.

         "It doesn't seem real," she said, laughing. "Your father and I talked about this when we were your age!"

         "It wouldn't be, without the Andromedan invasion’s having destabilised the Federation," Avon reminded them, wanting everyone to bear in mind that they were mortal, that they still had a lot of hard work left to do, and that even then, they very well might not win this.

         "And we never would have survived that, let alone capitalised on it, if you hadn't held their forces at Star One until the Fleet arrived," Blake said, taking the sour comment and pulling it inside out. "You and Jenna and Vila and the others. But then, I knew you would."

         Blake was looking at Avon like he really wanted to indulge in some Blakean physical affection, and Avon was looking at his drink like he wanted to die of embarrassment. Vila gave Rojer a significant 'money on this' look.

         "I've never heard anything about this," Rojer put in, hoping to prolong this praise, hoping that his dad would look up at his father and for once _not_ say something caustic that derailed the two of them actually talking, that they'd just get this over with already.

         "Come and raid the buffet with me and I'll sing you the Ballad of What Was Travis Thinking," his father said, laughing, and Rojer reluctantly did, annoyed that the moment seemed to have passed.

         His father was telling him something wild-sounding, probably untrue?, about some lunatic with a gun for a hand, a cape, an eye patch and a _voice like this_ , when a thin man coughed and said,

         “Er – President?”

         This form of address didn't yet catch Blake's attention as something that might refer to him, so Rojer tugged his sleeve and nodded at the newcomer.

         "I wonder if I might have a word?” the man said nervously. “I'm from the Trade Union Council, representing the industrial workers of Albion. Who do I talk to about setting up a formal meeting with you?"

         Blake blinked at him. "We have a _Trade Union Council?_ " Blake looked, even more than he had done, like this was the best day of his life.

         The man smiled at his expression and said, a bit shyly, "Well. We do now, sir." He coughed. "Thanks to you."

         Blake looked like he might cry. "Me. You talk to me. My Chief of Staff will almost certainly have to put someone in charge of the schedule soon, but I can meet with you now, if you like."

         The man looked a little taken aback. "But I don't mean to take you away from the party, President!"

         "How long will it take, an hour? The celebration will still be going strong when I get back. Vila will see to that. Do you mind if my boy comes along?" Blake clapped Rojer on the shoulder. "I'd very much like him to be able to say he was here for this."

         "Not at all, sir."

         "Run along and ask your dad," Blake said, letting Rojer go. "Remind him that the building and everyone in it have been vetted, _by him_. Perhaps he might–– No, he's supervising the broadcast shut-down in a minute. Make it quick, we don't want to keep this gentleman waiting."

         "Your boy takes after you. Can I ask where your family is originally from?" the TUC representative enquired of Blake as Rojer hurried off.

         "Wales. The Valleys, actually. You?"

         The rep grinned. "Onllwyn."

         " _Onllwyn!_ " Blake laughed with delight.

 

***

 

         The TUC representative reported back to the council the next day.

         "Did you get a meeting set up?" a woman asked.

         "Better than that. I met with him myself."

         "What, already?"

         "Right there and then. He was most obliging. Said there should be a permanent TUC secretary to liaise with his government, if we liked the idea and could get a few other planets organised and with us. I know some of you were worried about his lot being too Alpha to take much interest in us, and that'd it'd all be more of the same with a different name, but that's not at all the impression I had of him. His mother's family's from Gilfach Goch originally. He says the union branches used to have their own meeting halls and banners for marches, asked if we were bringing that back. I said that maybe we should. He wanted his boy to be there and all. Asked a lot of good, practical questions about what we wanted, what sort of operations we represented. He's an engineer himself, originally. And they did save the planet, didn't they? Risked their lives to do it and all."

         "Marches?" someone asked. "So he's really going through with granting the public assembly rights?"

         "He says there's only the question of whether they'll need a permit, or whether it'll be totally uninhibited. His security people want the former, he wants the latter. But even the permit's better than we've had it for sixty years."

         "And even when the Federation gave permits, it was really just a way of keeping tabs on who applied," an old man pointed out. "They always found you off-code."

         "Are we being too trusting?" asked a blonde girl with short hair, leaning back in her chair. "I mean, we all want to believe in him. We're falling over ourselves to."

         "Can't be worse than it has been," a ginger man said, shrugging. "And look, you can't say that he's not worked for it. It was what, fifteen years ago they brainwashed him into that show trial, and then that shoddy, shameful business with the fake charges – transparent, we said so then. The Freedom Party was always on the up and up. Decades now, he's been fighting for this, and no one who's met him says he's not sound. Even if he turns out to be some dictator – well. He's a better one. He's Welsh, for god's sake."

         "Not all of us are of British stock, you know, even on Albion," another man pointed out. "We don't necessarily put the faith you do in that."

         "It means he's union," the ginger man insisted. "Maybe somewhere there's a Welshman who isn't union as hell at his core, but I've never met one."

         "Did you say his boy was there?" the old man put in. "I didn't know he had a son."

         "Nor did I," the representative admitted. "Spitting image, though. Good lad. Seemed as keen as his father. Made a solid point about compassionate-leave arrangements under the new order. I'd not thought to ask for that."

         "I like him having a son, somehow," the old man said. "It speaks of continuity and trust. He's willing to put his own child on this planet with us, after a speech like that. He’s willing to protect Albion, and he really thinks he can."

         "Makes you think of him as more of a person," the not-British committee member admitted. "He's always been some folk hero. I honestly didn't think he was alive before the declaration. But he's real, and our rep likes him, and he's even got, what, a wife—”

         "Husband, I think,” the rep corrected.

         "Right, a husband and a son."

         "The stars are just like us," the blonde girl said in a droll tone, and the old man got it and laughed.

 

***

 

         Avon was not particularly pleased that one photograph of the balcony speech (the most popular photograph of the balcony speech – the one that looked likely to go down in history as the defining image of the event) contained Blake at the podium, looking impassioned and inspirational; Rojer, looking determined and proud and filial; and himself, with his hands on Rojer's shoulders, looking at Blake. Thank god you could see little of his expression, but what you could see of it made Avon deeply uncomfortable. They hadn't actually been standing all that close. Blake had been ringed by diplomats, and Avon and Rojer had been positioned to the left, slightly upstage. But take a picture of that group from the left to get that strong-Blake-profile shot, and the camera angle made it look like a bloody family portrait of the all-singing, all-rebelling Revolutionary Blakes.

         And then there was the new Free Press, which apparently, for lack of good information, felt very free indeed to assume that Blake's son must be 'pictured in front of Blake's husband’. In retaliation Avon wrote the most prominent publication an acidic note about poor research, the fact that he and Blake had never been married, and the quaint assumption that they necessarily must be. This was, of course, taken up and shared widely as a popular letter to the editor, 'smacking down the Federation's outdated nuclear family norms'.

         "In his capacity as Chief of Staff––"

         "And Deputy Head of Computing," Avon added, because Blake tended to leave that out as though it wasn't important.

         “––and _Deputy Head of Computing_ , though that has _no bearing whatsoever_ on this issue, Deva asks that you not speak directly to the press," Blake said surveying a newsfeed over coffee, rubbing his temples with one hand. "Ever."

         Avon opened his mouth to snap back, and Blake read aloud in a reasonable tone the nastiest thing Avon had called the journalists.

         "Fine," Avon seethed.

         It was perhaps unfortunate that some sectors of the press still erroneously believed the two of them were _together_. But, as Blake snapped when Avon mentioned it, both of them had better things to do right now than run around quashing rumours about their personal lives. If it bothered Avon so much, and if he had time on his hands to worry about trivialities, he could follow it up. Avon said he was busy with real work, actually, as Blake well knew, and then they had to argue about that instead.

         The Federation had been quite bad at making the people who wielded power in it popular figures. You couldn't elect them, and you mostly didn't know who they were. Servalan's flash had been the exception rather than the rule, and even Servalan had been so unrecognizable to her own ranks that her pretending to be Commissioner Sleer had been at all possible. The press seemed to like that Blake was a father: it gave them a first-family narrative, and some _people_ to talk about, at last. It made Blake look appealing and dependable, the President was assured by his new Consulting Psychostrategist, and it was really too bad that Blake and Avon weren't an item, because that would––

         " _Thank you_ , Carnell," Blake said.

         Carnell smiled wryly and raised his hands in a ‘don't shoot the messenger’ sort of way. "But it _would_ be an excellent idea if Rojer gave an interview."

         "An _interview?_ " Blake said incredulously. “Our Rojer?”

         "Oh yes.” Carnell steepled his fingers.

         And so Rojer was allowed to give one brief broadcast interview with a reporter who attempted to ask puff questions. "What would you like to do when you grow up?" resulted in Rojer giving a short, correct, passionate speech about how classing and forced career-assignments made free choice impossible for so many. If the rebellion did well in the coming years, to the extent that he could consider a private life, he thought he might like to be a sociologist or an urban engineer, and to help design the new housing and commercial developments that would be needed to accommodate a society predicated on self-determination.

         "The Domes are a mechanism of containment. They're not for people, not for living. People need houses, homes," Rojer said, intense and (in a controlled way) emotional. "People deserve safety and comfort. And I'd like, if I could, to be part of that."

         'House' was a word no one on the urbanised core planets used anymore – quarters was the standard term. There was a romantic resonance to Rojer's word choice, and a softly rustic outer-ring quality. 'House' was like 'palace', and he was saying that something like a palace, something that someone like Servalan might have had, was something that they all deserved. But it wasn't over-blown, and he said it with such conviction.

         "Congratulations on imparting your personality so successfully," Avon said to Blake behind a glass wall as they watched.

         "I was thinking he sounded like you, actually," Blake commented. "I wouldn't have thought to put it in terms of safety and comfort, so much as liberty. _That_ is you. Perhaps,” Blake admitted, “via Ruskin.”

         "Whose idea _was_ this interview?" Avon groused, even though he'd consented to it in advance, because Blake knew better than to try anything like this without asking Avon now.

         "Carnell's," Blake said lightly.

         "I hate Carnell," Avon commented.

         “No, you don't, Avon," Carnell (also watching) said with a benign smile. "You quite like me. I remind you of you, but better. Besides, Rojer is doing so well."

         "Who _exactly_ is your presumed audience?"

         Carnell tsked. "Avon, _Avon_. Teenage girls. Look, now he's doing your scowl. Trust me – he's about to win you hearts and minds. And loins."

         "Are you prostituting my son?"

         "He wanted to do this! It's not prostitution: it's social media. Honestly, you simply must work with me here.”

         Avon nodded towards Carnell. “Where did you even find him?" he asked Blake.

         Blake shrugged. "He had a grudge against Servalan––”

         "Him and half the known universe."

         "She banished him, effectively. We needed a psychostrategist––”

         "Did we? Did we really, Blake?"

         "And Orac thought taking him on was an excellent idea."

         "Oh," Avon said elaborately, “well, if _Orac_ said."

         "I'm just riding the winds of change to my own advantage," Carnell said mildly. "You shouldn't resent that Avon – it is, after all, what you like to think you do."

         As Carnell had predicted, Rojer was a bit of a teen heartthrob.

         "He's not even _that_ attractive," Avon insisted in a follow-up meeting with Blake and Carnell as they looked at the trend figures.

         " _Thank you_ , Avon," Blake said.

         "You are an acquired taste," Avon muttered, scrolling through the readouts and not looking at him.

         "It's the conviction that does it," Carnell explained. "I've never had any myself, but it really works wonders."

         “That, and Federation youth are starting to get more resistant to this batch of drugs," Blake pointed out. "The Federation has known for some time that they're going to have to vary the formula. Any given iteration only lasts a couple generations or so, and they daren’t use Pylene-50 on the core worlds--they need those populations to be productive."

         "Illegal suppressant-blockers _are_ flooding the market, if you know where to look," Carnell agreed.

         "They'll have to go with a higher dose, which people will notice and resent, or pour resources they don't have into finding a sound alternative and executing a switch-over." Blake chewed his thumb as he thought it over. Avon's mouth parted slightly, involuntarily, and then he snapped it shut.

         "Anyway, young women are intensely political," Carnell continued. "When they're talking about Rojer, they're talking about their politics. He's an outlet, and a rallying point. They like him because they like what he says."

         One young woman, however, was apparently not enjoying a surge of fashionable infatuation with Rojer.

         Porra, who'd relocated with the rest of the Io base personnel to the new Albion headquarters, seemed slightly disconcerted by Rojer's new-found popularity. Rojer mostly didn't know about the fuss he’d caused – he was kept busy with his parents, his adult friends (the _Scorpio_ crew still made a point of seeing him regularly), his aunt when she was free, school, new friendships with people in school, his chore rota assignments, extra lessons, and any meeting or task that either of his parents felt he should help out with. And with Porra herself. He hardly had time to breathe, let alone pay attention to Federation pop culture. He said as much to her when she finally brought it up, weeks after the interview.

         She clucked. "Must be tough, being the President's son."

         "Laugh all you like, but for all my dad's over-protective, they're neither of them particularly soft on me. I don't really think they know how to be. They're not soft on each other, either. Let alone themselves."

         They were sitting in Porra's new quarters. Porra had a bedroom within the palace, constructed from hastily-erected partitions. It was one of many in what had once been something like a ballroom or gymnasium or large meeting-hall. There was only the bed to sit on, so they used it as a couch. Porra leaned on him, and Rojer put his arm around her, and thought about how small her rounded shoulders were, how strange it was that people's souls, that a personality as distinct and subtle as Porra's, could be crammed into these tiny, frail things. She looked like she was about to speak, but she didn’t. He rubbed his thumb on her shoulder, and let her have a minute to think out whatever it was.

         The wall shook with the force of a convoy going by outside. Every partition in the great, echoing room rattled and groaned, the vibrations and the noise seeming to pass between them, like wind in trees. It was like being inside the belly of a vast animal. Porra groaned with it in sympathy and annoyance, and whatever she'd been working up to tell him got lost.

         “This place is such a _tip_.”

         Rojer, wisely, said nothing to this, choosing neither to insult her home nor to dismiss her annoyance with it.

         “I wish I hadn't had to leave behind my house,” Porra continued. “I've spent years on bases waiting to be useful, in lean-to boxes like this, and I miss–– So my house, right? There are wood floors, and it's pillared and open. You'd really like it. It's probably a bastion of privilege, but it's _my house_ , and there are carvings on the lintels, and so few places are beautiful. And I'm starving, sometimes, for that. Some of the rebels treat aesthetics like they're a Federation plot. And I'm sorry, that I talk too much."

         "I'm used to it," Rojer smiled teasingly. "Half the people I know could talk for Earth. I know it’s not perfect here, but we need you.”

         “Ha. What am I doing here?”

         “Deva always says the 'menial' work of holding the base together is actually _everything_ that allows us to roll along. Deva’s not stupid. And you do that, like everyone here does. And we can trust you. You're notoff on ‘supply runs’ to the nearest liquor store like Vila, or dodging kitchen duty. You're graft, you're team."

         Porra's lip quirked, and she turned to murmur into his neck. "You talk a good reassurance, but you didn't touch the house."

         "Well, obviously that makes you a bourgeois monster."

         She laughed and readjusted herself, using his shoulder as a pillow.

         "I left stuff all across the universe," Rojer admitted. "We had this awful base for years, and one day we just never went back, because Father had _his_ base and Io Camp was better, and safer. Dad keeps making noises about going back for some of our things, but Father won't _hear_ of it right now, says he needs him here.

         “That’s just some of it, though. We had to run out on planets all the time, before Dad got the timing down to an art for all the standardised cons we pulled. And even when he did get the whole system running smoothly, sometimes things just went wrong. We couldn't all sleep in the _Scorpio_ , and sometimes I think Dad went spare, hiding in the middle of nowhere, raising me in a bunker. He was an Alpha, originally, from Earth proper, and not exactly accustomed to living the low life. So he cracked on occasion. He wanted to give me nice things.

         “Sometimes we'd stay in these ridiculous posh hotels. Fountains in your room and all that. We had to run out right ahead of a patrol that had come looking for us, once. I was six or something, and I left this stuffed blue elephant I'd had pretty much since he found me on the bed. There was no going back for it, obviously. I cried like anything – god, I was such a brat about it. And it wasn't Dad's fault and he _hates_ being a disappointment. But even so. I missed it, and it's stupid, but a part of me still wants it, like it’s … this stand-in for having had a normal childhood, and having always had Father around, and for not being this weird, fit-for-purpose person who automatically checks entrances and exits when he comes into a room. We all have our _things_ , we all _miss_ things. Basically you should ask me to visit this house, it sounds amazing.”

         She laughed. "Are you sure it's just your parents who could talk for Earth?"

         "Oh yes. I'd be disqualified – I've never even been."

         "I suppose you are a clone, so it makes sense that you have your father's abilities,” Porra said thoughtfully. He stiffened slightly, but Porra didn't pick up on it.

         “You know, people are going to think differently of you, when it comes out," she continued.

         "Yes." He held her slightly tighter. "I know."

         "All these girls who think you're ‘Rojerable’––"

         "Let's not talk about them."

         "Well, we won't, but I don't want you to be unprepared. And you _are_ unprepared.”

         "I'm _not._ "

         “It’s all right, I mean— it’s only to be expected. How could you not be? Your parents protect you like force walls, and you always think the best of people."

         "I'm hardly naive––"

         "So what are they going to say about you, then?"

         "I don't want to talk about this." Rojer let go of her hand, and Porra sat up.

         " _We_ don't have to talk about it, but you need to talk about it to someone, Rojer, or you’ll freak out in public when someone says you’re not really a person, or that you’re a replacement your dad bred just to ensure the revolution still had a figurehead––”

         "Why would you even _say_ that?" Rojer pulled out from under her and stood up.

         "Because I don’t want you to believe it’s _true_ , not even a little. I want to protect you. It's Federation propaganda, Rojer, for fuck's sake. They’ve literally done it before. They said your father molested kids to shut him up, remember? Now that you’re a public figure too, they’re probably saying he had a son so he wouldn’t have to go out of the house, or that your dad _really missed_ your father––”

         "Look, you can't blindside me with awful shit and then just _say_ you're protecting me by getting the knife in first. Is this about the media thing?"

         Porra glared at him. "You think I'm that petty?”

         "I think you don't understand that I don't care about people I don't know. I care about _you_ , because you're thoughtful, and loyal, and beautiful, and a part of this _is_ about trying to protect me. But I have to be able to trust you if we're going to be friends."

         "You don't like hearing unpleasant things, but that's exactly what trust necessitates. It's better if you hear this from me than from strangers, especially ones trying to hurt you."

         "How _thoughtful_ of you," Rojer said sarcastically. "Maybe you'renot ready to separate what you feel about me from what you feel about yourself right now."

         "What’s that supposed to mean?"

         "That you're jealous for no reason––"

         "About some bloody message boards? I am _not_ ––"

         "That, and – maybe about the fact that I still have my parents. That I got my father back, and you didn't get a miracle." Her face blackened, and he quickly added, "I'm sorry." But he had a way of saying it that sounded almost angry.

         "That is some cliché bullshit, Rojer. Don't fucking ham-fistedly psychoanalyse me. What are you, the poor man's Carnell?"

         "Hardly." The poor man’s Roj Blake, more likely.

Rojer wanted to pace, but there was no room in this box. "This isn't helping."

         "No, it's not. I'd like you to go, actually."

         Hurt and a bit surprised, and angry that she was positioning herself as the wronged party after she'd started it, Rojer clenched his jaw. "All right. Maybe we should just see each other at school for a while."

         "Oh my god. You–– I can't believe what a coward you are!"

         "Well, I guess it just goes to show that cloning can produce very different people after all." He gave her a sour smile and left. He went back to his quarters, which were much better and next to the Presidential suite.

         His dad gave him an evaluative look when he came in.

         "Am I," Rojer poured himself a glass of water from the tap, downed it, and poured a second, "not _quite_ a person? Am I a replacement of some kind? Is that _really_ what people are going to say?"

         "Who the _hell_ said that to you?" Avon raised his voice. Curious, Rojer’s father emerged from the alcove where he'd been working with Orac and a big plastic data screen. He had something on his face.

         "What are those?" Rojer asked, momentarily distracted.

         "Reading glasses," Blake said mildly.

         "You can't just get ocular-nerve surgery like everyone else?"

         "Your father has good reason to find the idea of further brain alteration distasteful," Avon said for Blake in a slightly defensive tone. "More to the point, what happened?"

         "Oh, Porra told me something I didn't want to hear. And she's probably right, is the worst bit. But she's also annoyed with me, because of her own problems, and she could have been a _lot_ better about it.”

         "Was she trying to be deliberately hurtful?" Blake asked.

         "Does it matter?" Avon asked.

         "Yes," Blake said in an 'obviously it does' sort of tone. "Sixteen-year-olds have moods. They say stupid things they don't mean. They’re like people generally, in that way."

         "These weren't stupid, they were very accurate," Rojer said. "They were also really cruel. Porra makes Tarrant look tactful.” Rojer exhaled loudly. “I may need to think about how good Porra and I are for each other right now."

         Blake smothered a snicker.

         "What?" Rojer said irritably.

         "Nothing," Blake assured him, "you're just… very earnest. I'd forgotten how earnest young people are about this sort of thing."

         “Why bother to think about it?" Avon said to Rojer, ignoring Blake completely. "Why consider the question at all? Why waste your time? She is sixteen, and therefore entitled to a few mistakes – but not necessarily to your forgiveness."

         "You can't really mean that," Blake protested.

         "Why not? Or do you think being told that you are not _quite_ a person is character-building?"

         "She didn't say that," Rojer said, defending her. "She just… said other people would."

         "Ah," Avon said. "That, of course, makes all the difference."

         "You know, I both can and can't believe this is your position," Blake said, visibly angry with Avon now. "Don't talk it out, don't try again, don't compromise to save a friendship – no, Rojer will never need to know how to do any of that."

         "He can practice without live ammunition. Why should a particularly sharp-edged romantic partner be involved?"

         “It's especially interesting, because Rojer suggested that Porra was letting her personal issues cloud her judgment, and I think it's just possible that she's not the only one. I do remember the first time we came to Albion, Avon.”

         "And I suppose Vila let you know what happened on Earth. Good news travels fast. As it happens I don't want to talk about it,” Avon said. He looked as though it was the last thing he ever wanted to talk about, and as though Blake was the last person he ever wanted to talk about it with.

         "No, I didn't think you would. But the fact remains that your experiences aren’t Rojer’s. People in relationships can and do hurt each other for entirely benign reasons."

         "I'm not following any of this," Rojer said shortly.

         "Good," his parents said simultaneously.

         Frustrated that a conversation about his argument had somehow become about his parents’ issues, Rojer took his water and went off in the direction of his bedroom, sensing that they didn't particularly need him there anyway.

         "Dinner in an hour – your father has an evening meeting. And _don't_ bother with the girl," Avon called after him.

         "Anyway," he said to Blake when Rojer was out of earshot, "who exactly are you to lecture me on the intricacies of romance? How many committed relationships have _you_ had since I saw you last?"

         “None." Blake looked at him quite directly. "And no uncommitted relationships, either."

         “Well." Avon smiled triumphantly. "There we are, then."

         "I don't suppose _you_ _––_ "

         "As if happens, I was slightly occupied raising your child."

         "Ah. Well, I had this small project to organise, as you see." Blake’s gesture took in the rebellion at a sweep.

         "Busy busy," Avon teased, getting out the pasta jar. The _Scorpio_ crew had had to make a lot of their food due to limited resources (even when they’d gotten money, transporting food cubes en masse to Xenon and powering and maintaining a dispensator had been a hastle, and what it produced hardly worth the effort). As a consequence, even though cooking was a highly specialised skill on Earth, Avon had learned how to do a very little to cope. He wouldn't have bothered with it now, except for the fact that Blake looked at him like some kind of pre-Industrial harvest god when he so much as produced actual spaghetti, and improbable as it seemed, Blake had not had any relationships, committed or un-, since the events at Star One. Avon felt a little like celebrating.

         "I still think you're wrong," Blake said, eyeing the spaghetti tumbling into the instantly-boiling water with something like lust. Well. Avon would take what he could get.

         "Likewise. As usual. Find me the vegetable concentrates."

 

***

 

         Rojer avoided Porra at school, which annoyed her, and was excessively polite to her when he did have to deal with her, which made her furious. The rift between them grew into a cold, extended silence.

         Rojer did, however, set up a standing search feed with Orac’s help. When the first of his search terms started to come up in Federation press feeds, he sent a message asking Carnell for a meeting (Carnell's reply to his request included the phrase 'How intriguing!', and no fewer than three exclamation marks at various points) and found Deva and asked if he could spare a moment. As Chief of Staff (and Deputy Head of Computing) Deva was perhaps one of the universe's busiest people, but one of the key factors contributing to this state of affairs was the fact that he always spared his moments, especially for Blake's pressing requests (and apparently, by extension, for Rojer's).

         The three of them slipped into a conference room with a medium-size round table, and Rojer gestured at the seats, slumping down in one himself. He tossed some datapads across the table to the other two.

         "You may have already discussed this privately – you probably have. But I'd like to be briefed. What's our party line on this? Do we need one?"

         Carnell picked one of the datapads up and flicked through its tabs, glancing at the highlighted information without great surprise. Deva was much more taken aback.

         "I didn't think of this," Deva admitted. "It didn't so much as cross my mind. The charges are so far back, and so blatantly false."

         "Whereas I expected it, naturally,” Carnell said. “But it didn't occur to me that _you_ would expect it." He smiled at Rojer. "There's something I'm missing, isn't there?"

         "A friend put me on my guard,” Rojer said tersely.

         Carnell's expression changed, like he’d just managed to get a jar open somewhere in his brain. "That girlfriend of yours – Porra, isn't it?"

         "It was."

         “Ah.” Carnell’s expression cleared, and its accustomed pleased placidity was restored. “You know I might almost recommend her for entrance into the psychostrategic programmes, if I still enjoyed my former position. I've played chess with her twice. She was much better, the second time – ten minutes is excellent, comparatively. She learns from her mistakes, and she's hungry. She's a very clever girl. Detached."

         "If you like that sort of thing."

         "You should, Rojer – it could prove immensely useful to someone in your position. Perhaps it just has. And her detachment doesn't preclude personal and political commitment. If she'd been less invested in you, she wouldn't have bungled and lost your good opinion. A Central Security colleague of mine used to say it was easy to secure someone's affections, even a cautious and clever person’s – provided, of course, that you didn't care yourself. And that lady was the very best at what she did."

         "The point is," Deva set down the pad, "what are we going to say to all this?" He flicked his hand at the datapad and its insinuations.

         "And the ones that will follow," Rojer said, voice hollow. "Different, but not much more pleasant. They're going to work out that I'm a clone. That's gold, isn't it?”

         "Should we tell Blake?" Deva looked to Carnell.

         "Tell me what?"

         The three of them looked up at the man himself, just arrived in the doorway.

         "Give it three seconds," Carnell told Deva.

         Avon appeared at Blake's side. “What’s going on?”

         "There we are,” Carnell said cheerfully. “Well, Avon, your son is either attempting to overthrow his father and take the crown, or he's bringing us a problem within our sphere of responsibility. Which do you think it is?”

         "Well?" Blake took a seat on one side of Rojer, and Avon took one on the other. "Assuming, of course, that Rojer isn't plotting black treason."

         Deva glanced at Blake nervously, then at Avon. "I'm not sure how to put this, Blake––"

         Avon simply took a pad, scanned it, and flicked through the tabs. He paused a moment, then passed it to Blake. His lips were pressed thin.

         Blake's hand shook slightly as he read. "Right," he said, with a closed anger that felt like a bruise. "Of course."

         "As I was trying to tell Rojer, we're prepared for this," Carnell said calmly.

         " _Are we?_ " Blake paused to reign himself in. "And you didn't think to tell _me?_ "

         "Would you have responded any better last week?" Carnell asked politely. "It didn't seem as though it would matter when you heard it. I was looking for an opportunity to speak to Rojer about this myself, actually. You see, that speech you gave Thursday, where you spoke of being separated from your family for over a decade – that fits the purpose ideally, doesn't it? Rojer was there, you called him your son – cloning’s hardly an illegitimate means of reproduction among progressive people, these days. Look at the Auronar––"

         "That's a little difficult at present," Avon put in acidly.

         Carnell tsked. "Don't be tasteless, Avon. I know you're almost as angry as Blake is, but do _try_ and keep to the point. As I was saying, that speech could be taken not to refer to your siblings, or the _Liberator_ crew as a whole, or even just to Rojer, but rather to a family consisting of your child _and_ your partner––"

         "We are _not_ in a relationship," Avon said in the hard tone he'd used to remind everyone at the victory party that they still had the core worlds to take.

         " _Yes_ , Avon, we all know that," Blake snapped, and Carnell looked up for a moment and seemed to ask for strength.

         "The point is," Carnell said, returning to them, his smile strained but holding, "if we simply continue not to _publicise_ that interpretation of the facts, and if Blake makes a few more appearances avec putative partner and child, it puts a different spin on things, doesn't it? The Federation's narrative gets eclipsed by Happy Families, which everyone likes better, anyway. People are so _tired_ of the Federation's endless, drudging scandals."

         Deva raised an eyebrow. “They should _lie_?"

         "That's the trouble with you, Deva – you're limited! They don't need to say anything untrue – in fact, it's better if they don't. We've already downplayed the unintentional nature of the years that Avon's group spent away from the fold. Now it looks like a committed sacrifice – young family spends years apart for the cause. Rojer gives… a text interview, I think, about having met his father for the first time as a young man, rather than as a child. Maybe says something heartfelt about clones being legitimate children, when that comes up. He tells the journalist about having been raised as a wanted son rather than as a political tool or a replacement. Loves his parents, so wonderful to meet Father dearest after all these years, viva la revolution, so on and so forth. One of the original Blake Children has moved off-world now, you know – he’s had therapy for his conditioning, and is a sympathiser—"

         "Well, you would be, wouldn't you?" Deva murmured.

         "Those rush-jobs for show trials were never deep, and anyway, it's hard to permanently embed conditioning in children. Their brains are always changing on you." Carnell rapped his fingers on the table. "A well-timed interview from him as well, I think. And we can even remind everyone that Blake's advocate searched out evidence to exonerate him, and that he and his wife were murdered for their trouble."

         "Avon?" Blake asked. Avon nodded. "Rojer?"

         Rojer exhaled. "Yeah. Yeah, all right."

         "Right. Then we go ahead. Thank you, everyone."

         Deva and Carnell left, and Rojer and Avon stayed.

         "Are you all right?" Avon asked Rojer.

         "Of course––" he tried, bluffly.

         "There's nothing _'of course'_ about it," Blake hissed with surprising rage. "You shouldn't have had to hear that."

         Rojer shook his head. "Obviously it isn't true. It doesn't reflect on you _at all_ _––_ "

         "No, just on some blameless young men, stuck with broken-down, shoddy conditioning. Which isn’t pleasant, I can tell you."

         “It's done, Blake." Avon foreclosed Blake’s self-pity ruthlessly. "You were not at fault, and you are in the process of stopping anything like it from happening again, of taking down the institution that enables such atrocities.”

         "How can you––?”                 

         " _Finished_ , Blake." Avon clutched his arm, the gesture at odds with his unsympathetic words.

         Blake's head dropped, and when he looked up he ran his free hand over his face as though to smooth it, blinked and cleared his throat. "Right. Finished."

         “Good." Avon leaned back. "We have a great deal of work to do. And you, Rojer, have range practice with Soolin this afternoon. Don't 'forget' again."

         Rojer made a face. "I could do without being treated like I'm a child, Dad."

         "Given the subject, and that you managed to 'forget' your last two sessions, it's just possible that you _can't_ do without it," Blake said somewhat more cheerfully.

         "How do you two even remember that? Seriously, how in hell? You're running all this and you still find plenty of time to give me grief."

         "I'm glad you asked. You see, for fourteen years I’ve siphoned off my life-energy into a special reserve, against this day," Blake said quite seriously. "I need neither food nor sleep, and I no longer adhere to the laws of time. Oh, and by the way, I said I'd help you with trig tonight, but it’ll have to be later – the TUC meeting's been moved up."

         "And I am simply an inexhaustible bastard," Avon concluded. "Blake, distractions aside, you still have to approve my technical acquisitions request. I could simply forge your signature again, but you became unreasonable the last time I did it."

         "See, Rojer?" Blake took Avon's pad. "Parents, too, are human. I also suffer. Oh _Avon_ like _hell_ you need that—"

         Avon smiled, like he planned to enjoy this fight. "Data processing is vital––“

         "Not to the tune of half a million credits it isn't!"

         Rojer sadly trudged off to range practice.

         "Gracing us with your presence, then?" Soolin commented as Rojer grudgingly took up a blaster and joined her and Dayna, who had apparently elected to hang around for the proceedings. Which just made the prospect that much more embarrassing.

         "Don't you have better things to do than watch me fail for the millionth time?" Rojer grumbled to her.

         "Yes, actually," Dayna said. "I'm on full Development shifts now. Your dad's working me to the bone. Thought I'd take out my frustration by watching you make a fool of yourself – that always cheers me up."

         "Lucky me." Rojer took a breath, brought up the gun, and––

         "No. You're still doing it,” Soolin said, smacking his free hand to his side with the back of her hand. “What do you think you’re even _doing_ with this hand? Is it holding the gun? It isn’t. It's too late for Avon, but I can still save you.”

         “Oh, come on, we've been through this. I _can't_ stop doing it, so let's just work with it."

         "If I have to beat your dad's shooting stance out of you with a stick, I will."

         "What is that–– Oh my god. You actually brought a stick."

         "Yes. I did. Hit the target eight out of ten times––"

         Dayna glanced at the easy target and scoffed. "That's too generous!"

         "Just realistic," Soolin said. "He's skipped a lot of practices recently. Too important for the likes of us. Eight out of ten times, Rojer, and don't drop into that stance or you know what happens. If you feel a ludicrous flourish coming upon you, think of injustice or something and harden up."

         Rojer made a face at her, and managed nine hits and only one Dad slip-up. "Trade one for one?”

         Soolin rolled her eyes. "Fine. But you don't deserve it." She handed him the next blaster in their regimen.

         "And I don't think I'm too important," Rojer said, clearing the clip. He liked the standard guard blaster. It was solid and rested well on his shoulder.

         "We know," Soolin said.

         "You're too nice," Dayna complained. "You're practically unbearable. No one can tease you."

         "It's more fun to pick on Tarrant," Soolin said. "He doesn't have any feelings."

         “Oh, he has _some._ ” Dayna gave him his due. "Admittedly mostly strange, Tarranty feelings. But some. Anyway, that's why you're coming to Vila's Vidtape Night tomorrow. We're all going. It’ll be a _Scorpio_ reunion. Only without Orac. Or Slave. Or your dad."

         "No," Soolin pursed her lips. "Avon isn't invited. He only mocks the vizzes endlessly, anyways."

         “And he’ll probably remember a new weapons project midway through and try and get me to start on it then and there," Dayna groused. "And my _god_ , I thought he talked a lot about Blake _before_ _––_ "

         Soolin rolled her eyes and did a passable Avon. "Blake says it's vital that you prepare eighteen more advance teams – use these completely untrained farmers we picked up yesterday."

         "Blake and I want every one of them armed with a laser pistol made of dreams that plays a tune when you fire and works underwater," Dayna said in her best.

         "Blake is infallible except when I personally say otherwise. But when I do, I'll give you conflicting orders and insist _I'm_ in charge of you, not _Blake_ ," Soolin finished.

         "Is dad asking the impossible of you, then?" Rojer asked, hearing the common thread underneath the jokes and focusing on that, because genetics and upbringing alike had given him a one-track mind and an inability to let things go.

         "There you go again!" Dayna fumed. "Only as much as always – but now you're all big eyes, wondering if your dad's in over his head and the whole rebellion's doomed."

         "We're almost as prepared as we can be," Soolin said, and Rojer relaxed. Soolin wasn't likely to sugar-coat anything. "There are some adjustments to be made at critical points, but overall I'm relatively satisfied. It's just a lot of hard work – and we all got rather indolent, running the same games over and over again. Frankly, I appreciate the shake-up."

         Soolin was a bit like his dad (and Vila too, in his way) in that she valued both being excellent at things and chances to exercise her skills to the fullest. That affinity was probably part of why she'd stuck around, when she might have been a successful mercenary anywhere.

         "Besides," Dayna admitted, "taking Earth was never going to be easy. I can't really believe that it actually looks possible. But it's different, now that we're organised. Maybe I'll see Servalan again – we used to run into her every damn week. I've been waiting more than long enough to kill that bitch. Oh, try mine, Rojer, here––" She tossed him a small gun, which he caught. Shooting it made his hand shake and his teeth chatter. The target was destroyed entirely by something like a small shockwave. Dayna grinned. "Neat, isn't it? It's for assault waves in corridors."

         Soolin tsked. "A waste of resources. We'll have to solder that target back together."

         "It was worth it for a really excellent explosion," Dayna said serenely.

         Vila's Vidtape Night was about the last peaceful evening Rojer had for weeks together. The Alliance had been stretching its protective corridor around the planets in the Domino-corridor that had agreed to join them (most, at this point). They were also, unfortunately, going to have to guard three Federation-loyal worlds as they advanced, with troops they could ill spare. Those planets wouldn't be interfered with, but traffic between them and more central Federation worlds would be strictly prohibited once Blake's rebels moved onto their next ring – and from there, the inner-core planets. From there, Earth.

         They couldn't pull off another economy-topple. The Federation knew to expect that now. There was no way to get teams in – Federation forces were getting trigger happy, and interplanetary travel generally had slowed to a crawl. The Space Forces were all waiting in the next ring. If Blake's fleet won decisively against them, they'd fall back to the inner core. But one way or another, they would have to be faced. Even severely weakened by the years of decay and disorder that had followed the Invasion, the fleets still significantly outnumbered the ships the combined Rebel forces could muster. Blake’s people would have to outperform the Federation, tactically and technologically, to win. Orac's battle computing and predictive capabilities were being so extensively used that even Orac felt like it was doing something worth his time (almost).

         Blake and Avon, who'd worked on the Aquitar Project and had engineering and computer-systems experience of two teleport systems, as well as a working model, were busy supervising the manufacture and mass distribution of personnel teleports on all ships. If a ship needed to be evacuated, its crew could escape onto another carrier. That would be difficult with ships moving in battle and time sometimes short when a ship was damaged, but to that end some fixed carrier-ships were to be stationed amongst the fleet as it moved out.

         More challenging and interesting were the experimental light fighters, which could actually manage ship-wide limited-range teleportation and move out of the way of oncoming fire, or even appear behind Federation lines. Coordinating their movements so that no one phased into a Federation or allied ship required an immense and sophisticated computer network. Consequently Avon, with Deva and an extensive team, was building links between every scrap of the fleet. It was based on Orac's tarrial-link principle but, importantly, predicated on the non-tarrial computing technology the Rebels were using. It would be difficult for Federation ships to hack into and receive any information from the network. The ships should move as naturally and cohesively as a flock of birds in flight. And that natural movement took everything Avon and his team had to achieve. Rojer was temporarily pulled out of lessons to hand his dad wire cutters and pull meaning out of his monosyllables and insistent scraps of code. The light fighters also had to integrate with the existing ships and systems, and with Dayna's new ship-level weapons concepts. A few of the old-timers got a bit misty about classic Mellanby work, you could tell, and Dayna glowed.

         Carnell was moved entirely off PR onto psychostrategic implication, targeting key Federation commanders. He wasn't a battle-tactics specialist at heart and he didn’t do groups, but Federation troops did operate poorly without their leaders, and people who were unscrupulous enough to rise to the rank of Space Commander were generally also open to manipulation. Tarrant supplied Carnell with every scrap of old fleet gossip he could, and generally advised on Federation attack procedures. He himself was committed to pilot a craft in the actual engagement, and Jenna a major attack cruiser. Inga had a ship in formation with Jenna's. Soolin was staying to head up compound security. Vila had been declared non-expendable, to his own smug delight. They would need him for the security systems on Earth. Even if they got a surrender, there would still be hold-outs and bunkers. Vila was not only an unparalleled cracksman, he also knew where to find other skilled people on Earth, and could cajole them into cooperating with Blake's lot.

         To soften up the Federation fleet before engagement, and to crack Federation-held worlds for long enough for Blake's people to enter, root out the Federation, and allow the planets to decide whether they wanted to be independent or join the Alliance, the Rebels planned to use massive EMP waves. These would be triggered by teleporting light-fighters, which would dart in, set off their pulses, and hopefully survive to be yanked back by remote teleport control. They stood a good chance. Soolin helped drill the ground-assault troops, who were armed with Dayna's hand-held weaponry, complete with pulse-resistant casing.

         They had done everything they could, and Blake had taken on himself the most complex job of all: organising the whole tactical mess of it. He ensured that Orac's simulations were wedded with human limitations. He made sure everyone's contributions meshed: that they could actually bring Avon's network up without frying every ship when they turned it on, and without bankrupting the revolution in a single battle.

         Even with Deva and others taking some of the logistics tasks off him, Blake was still humming with the work, living on coffee and seeming almost too alive. Deva begged him to sleep; Avon told him to do it or he'd drug him when he wasn't looking. With too good a grace, Blake took himself off to bed. He tried to sneak out an hour later, only to find Vila stationed there holding drugs and looking cheerful.

         "You wouldn't," Blake said confidently, on the first of these occasions.

         "You should hear what Avon promised me," Vila said, not at all apologetic.

         Scowling, Blake slunk back to bed.

         The real trouble came when Blake announced his intention of personally participating in the major assault.

         He said it in a council meeting, and the sound in the room died in time with people therein catching sight of Avon's expression. Some of those present laboured under the false impression that Blake’s plan was fine as it was, and/or that Blake’s presence on a flagship was entirely expected. They then came to understand that voicing unsound opinions in Avon's presence was unwise.

         "I was under the impression that you had matured, slightly, in my absence," Avon said. "I see I was mistaken."

         "I'm not going to ask people to do something I wouldn't do myself. I'm going. That’s final."

         "No." Avon, who didn't normally check Blake absolutely in front of anyone who hadn’t crewed either the _Liberator_ or the _Scorpio_ now, sounded equally decisive. "You are not expendable. If Vila is not, then the classification comes cheap."

         "We can discuss this privately," Blake said. He was acutely aware of the entire council watching, respectfully silent.

         "There is nothing to discuss privately," Avon said. "This is not a private matter. This is not a decision driven by sentiment, of which I have little, nor is it an opinion. This is bare fact. What does history think of kings who insisted at riding at the heads of their armies when they had no real training for it? They are remembered as tyrants, buffoons and losers. _Dead_ tyrants, _dead_ buffoons––"

         "On the _Liberator_ I––"

         “On the _Liberator_ you largely made sound command decisions.” Blake snorted to hear him say it, but Avon continued, not in the mood to be derailed. “You can make similarly sound decisions _from here_. Perhaps it was the wrong tack, to suggest that you are incapable. You are _capable_ , but it would still be idiotic to contend that you should exercise that capacity personally, rather than commanding from a position of safety. Command in a larger sense is your greater capacity, Blake. And your death would destroy the Alliance."

         "I am _not_ ––"

         "Would _destroy_ it, Blake. How many times must I explain this to you? Oh, perhaps we'd still carry Earth. But we don't _need_ to carry Earth – we need to hold it. We need to construct a lasting, permanent arrangement. And for _that_ ," his finger stabbed the air in Blake's direction, "we need _you_."

         "What do you imagine it will do to the Alliance, if people see me sitting here while they fight?" Blake growled.

         "Nothing at all. People will see a general in command of an army, a _President_ rather than the leader of a guerrilla band. They will see a man who has exposed himself to danger for decades, and suffered all they could wish for it. If you attempt to go, I will attempt to stop you. If you go, I will go with you. If you die, I will follow you to hell saying, 'I told you so,' and I will say it for eternity. I advise you not to try."

         Blake broke off from glaring at him. "Does anyone _else_ here have an opinion?"

         Deva raised a hand. "I agree with Avon, actually. I’ve been saying much the same for years.”

         "Yes," said a division head, sensing this was both the right decision and a means of ensuring her personal safety. “Avon’s right. Absolutely."

         The night before the battle, Avon stayed in Blake's room, sitting stiffly on the couch, arms crossed.

         "You need sleep as well," Blake said awkwardly, getting into bed in pyjamas and a dressing gown, for what he presumed was Avon's comfort.

         "I need you not to attempt to hide yourself in a barrel of salt pork and have yourself wheeled onto Jenna's ship," Avon returned.

         Blake rolled his eyes, ignoring this. "You're vital to the plan, Avon. You have to be at your best."

         Avon grinned sharply. "Then you had better propose a solution, fearless leader."

         Blake ran a tired hand through his hair. "You could lock me in," he said, feeling ridiculous. "I could give you the room key."

         "Unacceptable. You might try the window, with bedsheets. You might call for teleportation in the night."

         “Oh, for god's sake, Avon. You can't sit on the couch all night watching me, or have Soolin hold me at gunpoint, or sleep in my chair, given your back––"

         "Then you'll have to let me drug you, Avon said reasonably.

         "What?"

         Blake had been on the edge of suggesting a ridiculous scenario where they gave the key to Vila with instructions to come back in the morning, and they shared the bed so that Avon would wake up if he tried anything. Midway through the night perhaps he and Avon would roll over to look at one another, and he’d say something like, 'Can't sleep either?’ and then they'd make love – which would be unwise on the eve of their great enterprise, but oh _god_ it would relieve the tension.

         He simultaneously felt Avon's suggestion was an anti-climax, and really disliked the idea of taking drugs.

         "You will have to trust me," Avon said simply, looking at Blake with tired, serious eyes, and suddenly they were at Star One again and Blake sagged, letting the exhaustion wash over him. He'd already given Avon his answer, long ago.

         "Get on with it, then," he said roughly, and Avon went and returned with the patch.

         "Lie down," Avon said, and Blake did. Avon pulled back Blake's pyjama top, just slightly, and laid the tranquilliser patch on Blake's neck. He waited for it to take effect.

         "Don't _you_ trust _me?_ " Blake murmured a touch more plaintively than he'd have liked, the drug already taking hold.

         "Of course," Avon said, a husky laugh buried in his voice. "I trust you entirely to be yourself."

         Blake thought he might have felt a hand smoothing his hair off his forehead, but then he was being pulled under. The bed shifted as Avon stood up and walked towards the door. Blake wanted to say, 'Don't go', but he was under water, fathoms deep, and dead until the morning.

 

***

 

         The Federation fell back to the inner-core worlds. In the space engagement, the Alliance lost three ships and one hundred and thirty people. The Federation lost something like a hundred ships and 2,833 people – casualty figures are always inexact, failing to account for the missing, defectors and long-term injuries that eventually result in death.

         It was, in short, a rout. Tarrant called it the Charge of the Light-Fighter Brigade. Blake laughed, once, and Jenna gave him a less-disdainful-than-usual look, and Tarrant felt he was finally getting somewhere. Then, in his hubris, he said something about his own performance having been impressive, and Jenna rolled her eyes. This was devastating, and it took Tarrant considerable time to recover.

         “So _few_ ,” Avon murmured looking at the figures, honestly shocked. Blake flinched at the reminder that he’d once asked Avon to blow up bases staffed with more than a hundred and thirty people as a matter of course. It had been necessary. _This_ was necessary. Blake balanced the death tolls from Pylene-50’s use in the outer worlds, from mass purges, against what he’d done and found his sins light – but no comparison could unmake them entirely.

         Planet-toppling went less well. Sixty per cent of the planets in the newly opened ring initially opted to wait and see whether it was worth their while to support Blake. But then, they were being led by the sort of Leading Citizens who'd prospered under the Federation, and they were more secure than the last ring of planets had been. They also had a greater fear of reprisals. The Federation had always laid a heavier hand on its nearer domains, and these worlds had little cultural memory of having been free.

         After three months, though, the figure dropped to forty per cent as Blake's Alliance gathered recruits and resources from amenable planets in this middle ring and prepared to move in on the core planets. This time they wouldn't go in all at once – they’d stab in stages, coming in like spokes on a wheel, dividing the territory into zones they could police and cutting off supply lines and communications.

         They also lost one of the loyalist planets in their new corridor to a rearguard Federation incursion, and had to scramble to claw it back. But one of the three holdouts from the invasion's first stage came over to the Alliance. Another made a convincing argument for its status as a culturally different, independent world, and was promised full devolution after the war, should the Alliance win. That promise guaranteed the planet’s support for Blake – if he ended up keeping his promise, that was excellent, and if not, they'd have lost little by standing with rather than against him, in a limited and passive sense. They policed themselves against Federation incursions, and Blake withdrew most of his troops.

         By this time, the Alliance had picked up just enough personnel from the newly freed planets to try something risky. Operation DSV (something of an in-joke, Tarrant told Rojer with a grin) required a skilled technical team capable of hacking a complex system, Avon's battle network, Orac (held back in a safe location), blip-ships (the slightly larger cousins of the first wave of teleporting light-fighters), and a substantial backup fleet, hidden behind an especially strong form of Avon's detector shields. The operation was a gamble. They might well lose everyone involved. But if it worked, it could save innumerable lives and secure victory for the Alliance.

         Blake nearly chewed his hands off waiting for news of Jenna and Tarrant's progress. News came slowly, and then in a flood as the battle fleet rushed in to support the technical team. The enslaved population of Space World was with them, and the Altas were unprepared to fight people armed with EMP weapons that disrupted their connection to the System, people who suddenly disappeared when the Altas moved to dispose of them. The Altas had never had thought to use their own teleportation technology so inventively.

         The real break came when Jenna's team got onto one of the DSV-class ships. The defence mechanism that she'd encountered on DSV 2 seventeen years ago was offline, presumably because the ship she’d just boarded was still in dry dock. Jenna extended a hand warily to the ship's console, expecting to once again feel pain and the sensation of being known.

         Nothing happened. Jenna's heart sped up. The plan might still work, but they'd been hoping to wrest the ships free from inside rather than fighting their way in to take them. And Jenna had been hoping for something like the feeling she'd used to have with the _Liberator_ , which she'd loved more than any ship she'd flown before or since. She dipped her head and let her hair hide her face from her team. She wasn't crying, but it wouldn't do for them to see her starkly disappointed expression.

         "Welcome, Jenna Stannis."

         Jenna looked towards a visual reference point in amazement.

         "How?" she whispered.

         "The System is a centralised consciousness. When the _Liberator_ was destroyed, the interface you call Zen returned to that consciousness via the datalink between Systems technology and ceased to exist. You have accessed the central database. This interface was reactivated to serve your needs. Creating an alternative interface would be inefficient."

         Jenna stoked the console. "Are you _our_ Zen?"

         "The programming, settings and data storage remain constant. The form, identical."

         Jenna activated the long-range link to Orac, and thus to everyone back at headquarters. "Information. You are _never_ going to believe who I've just run into."

         It took several seconds for Blake to respond "What, _really?_ " In the background Vila could be heard saying "Check if there's a treasure room on this one!" (There wasn’t – the ship was, after all, still in dry-dock.)

         "Orac, can you cooperate with Zen––" Jenna started.

         "Reluctantly!"

         "I wasn't finished. Can you link Zen with the other ships? If it's a linked consciousness, can’t we move out en masse?"

         "Of course," Orac snapped. "You need only support the ship's existing connections with the battle-link we have already established for the core fleet, which will require an installation process. Must I explain everything?"

         Jenna turned to Tarrant. "Get the team. Get them to start patching us in–– "

         Tarrant grinned at her, and she grinned at him, and he went in for a hug and she dodged and told him to get to work. Appropriately chastened, Tarrant did so.

         Clean up on Operation DSV took weeks. The System's three worlds weren't yet in any political position to consider an alliance, but the former slaves were willing to let Blake's people take the ships (and there were several – the System had been busy) in exchange for the technical assistance that would enable them to live without the Altas. Jenna's fleet came up under full detector shields – the DSVs were to be a secret, an empty space guarded by squadrons of light fighters, until the invasion of the core-world belt. Which would be soon.

         Deep secrecy didn't stop both Avon’s and Blake’s _Liberator_ crews, including Rojer (who had, after all, lived on the ship as an infant), from beaming up with indecent haste. Vila touched Zen's visual interface with fondness and said he could find it in himself to forgive Zen for that business with the wormhole after all.

         Avon seemed less thrilled than the others. Privately, he considered Zen’s miraculous survival deeply unearned, on his own part. What was next, Cally rising from the stone cairn he'd made her on Terminal? After everything, she had died down there in the dark, without companions. Perhaps it would have given her peace to know how close they were now to victory. Even so, Blake had entrusted the _Liberator_ and her crew to him, and in return he’d given Cally a death she’d have wished only on her enemies. He looked over at Blake, for whose sake he had destroyed this ship, or one very like it – ultimately, to no purpose. In looking at Blake he also looked at Rojer, standing next to him – Rojer, who he had also nearly lost in the process.

         There had been no choice but to move on from his mistakes, to pretend they didn't matter. Tarrant, Vila and Dayna all knew what a fool he'd been, and they must know by now what it had been for. None of them were blind, but they had somehow managed to find the decency not to mention it. Avon felt old and tired and, despite all that, still sick with longing. There Blake sat, on the couch Avon had imagined having him on, oh, more times than he cared to remember. Or one very like it.

         Blake was alive, Avon reminded himself, and they just _might_ do it – everything Blake had wanted. If Avon died having accomplished that, well. It would be enough.

 

***

 

         Meanwhile, in the cold war, Rojer had seen Porra around. She was currently Carnell's PA. Carnell had requested one during the battle prep, because he needed one and because he liked to have his importance confirmed by signs such as these. Porra, who disliked Carnell (too much smiling) (all of it fake) (because Carnell was a fake sort of person who had no authentic smile in him, and everything was equally authentic and in- to him), endured the assignment with ill-grace.

         Meanwhile, Carnell appeared to genuinely like her. He seemed to find her distaste for him amusing. He made a special effort to charm her, and was delighted by his failure. Besides, she was proficient. He deliberately set her tasks she didn't know how to do. She'd come back an age later, with whatever it was done, and passably well, too – having found someone with security clearance who knew what the fuck he was on about and traded tasks, or having looked it up and learned how to do it herself in the interim.

         Carnell also sent her on errands to Themselves, for reasons of his own. Avon smiled at her in an entirely different disturbing way, as though his mouth was made of knives and he had to keep it open like that to avoid bleeding to death. He was scarily polite, which that told her Rojer had definitely reported back about their argument. Unfavourably. Blake, in contrast, was brusque, as he was to everyone, but polite in a real sense. Very occasionally she thought he pitied her, which made her bristle and wish the assignment had been to Avon instead, knife-mouth and all.

         And where Themselves went, Rojer followed, trailing behind them with datapads for his father in his hands and industrial cable for his dad looped around his neck, like the necklaces men used to wear back on Silmareno before the Federation came. Laughing at something Vila had said, and stopping abruptly when he saw her. Smiling politely – although she couldn't decide which parent his politeness was from, or whether it was his own variation on the theme.

         One day she was sent out on an errand to find Avon and Dayna, show them a proposal, and ask when they might be available to discuss it. Carnell could have communicated all this electronically, but he found Dayna checked her messages infrequently and was far more receptive to in-person requests anyway, while Avon worked through his inbox according to his own assessment of priorities, meaning that you could wait a long time for him to get back to you unless you pushed for it. Carnell wanted to consult with the two of them about the possibility of turning the DSVs’ defence mechanism into a psychological weapon sometime this century. He also wanted to know whether they could possibly do something like that without Blake finding out about it – he realised that was a moot point since he would need Avon's assistance, but still, he thought it worth asking.

         Porra bumped into Rojer in the corridor, outside Avon's door, and spilled her datapads all over the floor. Blake, who Rojer was accompanying, picked one up, glanced at it and was off: storming into Avon's office, shouting about being no better than the Federation. Had Avon _seen_ this? Did he _know_ about this? (Obviously not, Porra thought, given the wording of the memo. Perhaps Blake just asked for effect.)

         Rojer gave Porra a rueful smile, and helped her pick up the rest of the pads.

         "How are you?" he asked cautiously.

         "Single and bitter," Porra responded automatically. She thought about being embarrassed, but decided against it. "You?"

         "Oh, same. Um. Single. I mean." Rojer sucked in a deep breath, and slowly blew it out. "Listen. We should talk."

         "We are."

         "Oh for fuck's sake–– If you don't want to, _that's fine_."

         "I didn't say that."

         "Good. Because if you're willing to talk, then one way or another, we are going to resolve this. And at the end of the conversation we'll be dating, or friends, or hate each other properly but we’ll be able to work together without being weird about it. Hate's a good, stable emotion – you can work with hate. But not––" he waved a hand, “––all of the above. Or whatever. All right?

         "Fine. Eight, mine."

         “I can’t – family dinner. Sorry. Nine thirty?"

         " _Fine_."

         She turned on her heel. Admittedly she hadn't quite done Carnell's assignment, but bloody Avon bloody knew about the bloody psychological weapon now, didn’t he? Blake was utilitarian enough to use everything at his disposal, in general. And it was easy to be talked into something potentially unethical that a significant portion of you wanted to do anyway. But he had that _thing_ about psychological conditioning – well, you would, wouldn't you? But, there again, since Avon had bollocked him legendarily in the council (who with a decent security clearance _hadn't_ heard about that?), Blake had started to think of himself as a current-and-future President rather than a desperate crusader. So she didn't quite know how it was going to go, couldn’t guess what imperatives Blake would ultimately let himself be governed by. Perhaps it depended on how Avon looked at the issue, and that was even less easy to determine.

         Porra also didn't know how it would go with Rojer, because she cared about him. That, as Carnell had pointed out weeks ago about something unrelated (or had it been? You never really knew with him), made her _involved_ , and _involvement_ made her next door to useless. Anyway there were too many variables. But she had guessed Rojer would break and force them to talk at some point. He was Rojer, and direct, for the most part. And he cared about everything. Hopefully whatever Rojer felt for her more specifically, combined with her own preparations, would be enough to see this through.

 

***

 

         Rojer and his parents were all tired. Stress sat in the bases of their spines, and they felt it even in sleep. They spoke little over dinner. The endless work and responsibility wore them down almost more than spats of high danger would have.

         Rojer had made the mistake of checking his feeds. Another batch of particularly vicious smearing had gone up – the Federation had outdone themselves. And of course it was utter nonsense, but it lingered nonetheless, like an old-fashioned form of conditioning.

         Avon was afraid Blake would publicly state his intention of being on the next attack run. If he did, it would be difficult for Avon to stop it from happening. It was possible Blake had been lastingly moved by his earlier arguments, but Avon thought that was dangerously optimistic. He could try making a personal appeal, perhaps on Rojer's behalf, if not his own, but he knew Blake was likely to reject such an appeal because it _was_ personal, because it would be _his_ child made fatherless if his ship was destroyed. Avon knew exactly how a ship of the _Liberator_ 's class could be taken down by multiple pursuit ships, and his mind ran through the scenarios against his will when he lost focus. If they won the war and lost Blake, it would be the ultimate, cruel irony.

         And Avon was beginning to think it quite likely that they _would_ win. He was beginning to realise that he hadn't given enough thought to what he would do _if_ it happened. The last time they had been in a similar situation, poised on the brink of what might have been victory at Star One, he'd demanded the _Liberator_. He’d made a show of his autonomy, trying to make Blake realise and admit how much he needed Avon, and ask him to stay. _That_ had not worked out as planned. Avon had learned in the aftermath, in crippling, devastating fashion, how little he could tolerate the consequences of his bluff. If they didn't lose this conflict, then he'd have to take some sort of government position; he'd _make_ them give him one. People would ask why he was doing it and he'd say, ‘To be near Rojer, of course’, and when Rojer was an adult and that stopped quite making sense, he'd have to deflect their questions some other way. Perhaps he’d throw himself into some engrossing research. Eventually it couldn't fail to look obvious and pathetic, but he almost didn't care. He wouldn't leave Blake. He couldn't stand the thought of it. Perhaps Blake would never _mention_ it and force his hand.

         Blake, on the other hand, was more exhausted than any of them. He felt the Alliance’s casualties, even if the ratio was in their favour. He was bitter about being fought on the question of his presence on the invasion fleet, after he'd lived and breathed this rebellion for decades; about being asked to trust Avon and being given no trust in return; about being publicly over-ruled by Avon, who wielded all the privileges of the lover he wasn't. And when the war was won, could he convince Avon to stay in government, near him? Blake would have to fight for it, he knew. Even if Avon did want him, he might well resist doing what Blake wanted on principle. He'd done it before – sliced into Blake and made him vulnerable _right_ before a crucial engagement. Blake needed Avon desperately – but Rojer was fifteen, and soon Rojer wouldn't. Blake didn't know how he would manage without Avon, personally or professionally. Avon had given most of his banking profits over to the Alliance's use (an investment, he called it), but he remained a rich man, who might go anywhere to lead a comfortable, quiet life, or even a hedonistically indulgent one, once he was no longer a wanted criminal with a minor to raise.

         Perhaps, Blake thought, Avon would stay on Earth – he’d been born there, after all. And Rojer would probably want to attend university there. Avon would want to stay close to _Rojer_ , who Blake (for an unfair moment that was deeply at odds with how much he loved the boy) felt suddenly, venomously jealous of. Rojer would probably also want to stay in contact with _him_ , which would mean Avon would probably _have_ to see Blake occasionally, even if he didn’t stay. Blake envisioned the awful possibility of a life in which he only saw Avon at their son’s wedding, for the births of their grandchildren.

         But even if Avon were somewhere on Earth, and not at Blake's side (and why should he be? Avon had never _wanted_ to be political), it would still be intolerable. How often would he see Avon? Would he have to contrive excuses? Institute weekly (weekly! _weekly!_ ) family dinners? Tell everyone, with a tight smile, that no, it had all been a misunderstanding actually. Avon wasn't _his_ (he was, he was, he was).

         Avon's eyes looked bruised in their sockets, he'd been so tired for so long. Avon was older than he had been. He looked distracted by something, probably work, as he lifted his wine glass, and he was beautiful, still so beautiful to Blake, who couldn't lose him again.

         After dinner, Rojer tried to leave surreptitiously.

         "Where are you off to?" his father asked the back of his head with forced geniality, trying to be himself even though he was bone tired.

         Rojer winced – it was exactly the question he didn’t want to be asked. "I'm going to make it up with Porra. Maybe. Probably."

         "Ah," said his dad. Mercilessly.

         Rojer sighed, and turned around. “Dad––"

         "Oh no," Avon waved his hand. "Go right ahead."

         Rojer made a face like he was counting to ten in his head. "If you want to say it, and you _obviously_ do, just say it. We might as well do this."

         "Very well." His dad smiled unpleasantly. "You are making a mistake. You are well aware of it, and you are doing it anyway. I would have thought that, if I had managed to convey anything to you during the course of your childhood, it might have been an injunction to avoid thoughtlessly exposing yourself to risk. That _includes_ trusting people who do not deserve it."

         Rojer laughed unpleasantly. "You really can't stand me making my own mistakes, can you? I'm fifteen, Dad!"

         Something about the wording made his dad bristle. "I have never understood the contention that it isnecessary to make your own mistakes, where they can be avoided. The world contains enough opportunities for unavoidable folly as it is. Besides, the experience is hardly profitable – if it were, Vila would be the wisest man we know."

         “Oh, _lay off_. Why do you say rot when you know it's rot? To impress people? I've known you all my life, and I'm not dazzled by the performance. You think the most interesting part of you is your bullshit, and it's _really_ not. That's not why _anyone_ who cares about you does it."

         " _Rojer_ ," Blake said in a warning tone.

         "Stay out of this, Blake,” Avon snapped.

         Rojer rolled his eyes. "Oh yes,” he said to Blake. “Defend Dad, he needs it. Either of you lecturing me about relationships is pretty rich, considering. I mean – how long _is_ this going to go on?"

         Avon froze in a particular, queer way.

         "That's enough," Blake said, and he was properly angry, in that closed, quiet manner Rojer had seen on only a few occasions. He'd never spoken to Rojer like that before.

         "Of course you're on Dad's side," Rojer said. "Because in a real pinch it's each other, isn't it? I'm an afterthought, really. It's not like either of you wanted me. I'm just––"

         The word replacement, which Porra had used months ago, and Carnell had suggested soon after that, and a Federation gossip sheet had used just today, swirled through his head.

         “It was politically convenient, wasn’t it?” Rojer continued thickly. “I mean what if Roj Blake never came back? What were you going to do, Dad? Train me up and push me out as a figurehead, because of who my father had been? Sorry, because of who I ‘am’ – because at that stage you'd have probably started calling me a clone again, wouldn’t you? For expediency's sake. It’s hard for me to see just what you’d get out of it, but I’m sure you have ten reasons, like always. I mean, I am a replacement for him, aren't I? That is why you cared about me in the first place. Because I look like the great revolutionary leader _._ Or did you just take me in, Dad, because he trusted you, and you thought you owed him?"

         Avon properly looked at him, and Rojer cut himself off.

         “How…” Avon asked, and he had to pause before he could continue. “How _can_ you suggest I don't love you, Rojer? Even for an _instant_ , even confused by what they're saying about you, even furious at me – how _can_ you believe that?”

         “I––” Rojer started.

         He looked his dad in the face. Avon looked as though Rojer had stabbed him, and Avon had stood still and let the knife in. Rojer felt as though he'd done it. He didn't know what to do in the face of his dad's pain, and he was mad at Avon but he was growingly, overwhelmingly angry with himself. He could feel heat prickling in his own eyes. They had never talked about Rojer's origins before, beyond his dad offering him a fairy tale, a family romance. He’d told a child that he had a noble father, tragically dead, rather than an unwitting donor who'd been violated in his creation. He’d never said that Rojer had been intended as a weapon to hurt that father. Rojer had known, had even feared Blake would see him that way, at first, but he’d never talked it through with anyone.

         Rojer had always sensed his dad's pressure points and circumnavigated them, with the sensitivity and care children can have for adults they love. They had never fought like this – they had fought like Avon and Vila argued, like his parents debated about supplies and dinner, stable and constant and safe. Rojer hadn't known he had it in him to hurt his dad so deeply. But of course he did. Everyone who could really devastate his dad was in the room.

         Rojer wiped his eyes angrily with his fist and stormed out.

         A part of Avon was wondering how Rojer could have done that to him. How Rojer could have thrust aside the long evidence of his love when Rojer was the best Avon felt he'd ever done by another human being, when Avon loved Rojer more than was entirely sane, and had done everything he could think of for him, and would have given him anything he could. How Rojer could have seen he was in love with Blake ( _god,_ how embarrassing) and exposed him like that, purposelessly and cruelly. The one chance he'd had to see this through was predicated on Blake never mentioning why Avon remained with him when the battle was lost and won. And now that chance was, perhaps, gone. They'd have to talk about it. Probably not now, but Blake wouldn't forget the conversation. He would feel morally obligated to bring it up, to clarify things. As if harsh light and a lack of ambiguity were always helpful.

         But Avon was older than he had been. The better part of him was not lingering on his own betrayal, but instead on Rojer, who had never said he felt like a weapon or a thing, and did. Who had never said anything about how the Federation discussion of what he was and what he was for was bothering him, because his parents had been busy with what Rojer considered real matters, and Rojer was, above all things, a good son. Who had spent months with that fight with that stupid girl resting in him, gnawing away at him. Rojer was fifteen, but his feelings were real, and he'd walked out crying. Avon wanted to go to him, but couldn't find the will to do it, and wondered if it wasn't better if Rojer cried it out. Wasn’t _he_ at least as much the wronged party, anyway? Avon had matured, not become a saint.

         Blake put a hand on his shoulder. Avon had slumped down, elbows on the table, head in his hands, looking pale misery. Blake hated seeing it, and he couldn't help himself from sliding his arms around Avon, like Avon had for him when they'd lost Control. A shudder wracked Avon's body, though he wasn't crying, and Blake held him together, held Avon to him. He pronounced Avon's name the way he did, sometimes, to rhyme almost with 'even'. Even as in equal. Even though, even if, even unto the end.

         Avon took it, sucking Blake's touch into himself as Blake said soothing, probably true words in a low rumbling voice, something about teenagers saying all kinds of things, about Rojer obviously being under a great deal of stress. For a moment, Avon let Blake comfort him, even as he considered how cruel, useless, brutal and ungenerative his love for Blake ultimately was.

         What he made of Blake's warmth, of simple kindness. He had lived off accidental brushes of the man's hands for months, like a snake that gulped greedily and could go without further sustenance for a long, long while. He'd have hurt anyone but Rojer, for Blake. He'd have done almost anything to keep Blake from harm, even to simply be in his presence. He'd sit like a lathe in Blake's toolkit, a prized possession (my Chief Computer Expert, my advisor), and feel sickeningly happy to be Blake's, used and useful.

         How staid was his love in its steadfastness, how inhuman in its demands and its constancy. No wonder Rojer jerked like a bird fighting a falconer. Avon didn't know how to love softly – he wanted control, he wanted everything. He screamed bloody murder to be free of Blake and then staged whole dramas, practically begging Blake to ask him to stay. He wanted nothing or absolutely everything – more than people were supposed to give one another. No wonder Blake had never said, I see you, I know what you want. Who the hell wanted this? And from him – a man old enough to know better, when Blake had his own problems.

         Avon shrugged him off tiredly (that was enough of Blake's chaste compassion – he craved it and yet he could only take so much of it) and stood, hands wrapped around the top of his chair. "I think I'll go to bed."

         "Shouldn't we decide what we're going to do?" Blake asked like they were planning a counter-assault.

         Avon laughed a little. " _We_ are not going to do anything. Rojer will sleep on Vila's couch, or Tarrant's, perhaps, and tomorrow I’ll say something to him, and it will pass. Don't go looking for trouble, Blake. You have more than enough already."

         At least, for once, they all had discrete engagements for the entirety of the next day. They wouldn't have to spend tomorrow trying either to ignore the lingering half-life of the argument or to 'talk it out’. (Avon had never really believed in that technique – it was like catharsis, a failed psychological theory predicated on incorrect assumptions about how people worked.) Perhaps Rojer had noticed that, and had timed his approach to Porra accordingly. Clever boy. Idiotic, but clever.

         "Don't. Don't do that, Avon." Blake sounded angry, and stood himself. It was probably hard for him to watch a fight and not be involved, Avon thought wryly. Poor Blake, his blood up and nothing to do with it.

         "Do what, precisely?"

         "That trick of yours where you pretend I'm not here, that I have never been here for you. I have _tried_ to be, and you have never trusted me enough to––"

         "No," Avon admitted. "You are the last person I trust with certain information." There was no point in denying what Blake knew.

         " _Why?_ "

         "Why not?" Avon sighed. "Go to bed, Blake. We're all tired."

         Avon walked a few paces towards his bedroom, and Blake followed him.

         "I've no intention of being dismissed by you. You know, after all this time, sometimes I think you _do_ still hate me––"

         Avon laughed. Because it was funny.

         Blake's jaw clenched. He hated being laughed at. He hated that Avon had thrown him off, wouldn't let any comfort pass between them, even after years, even with a child in common. When Avon needed him, or at least must need _someone._ Even if it was only because Rojer had just ripped his heart out (and Blake had watched someone with his face do that and felt like he'd done it, and knew he _had_ , at times). At least right now, Avon _must_ need Blake some fraction of the extent to which Blake needed Avon.

         The tension of the argument writhed in Blake, and the tension of the war sat heavy in him, and he had borne it long. And now he and Avon were going to have an argument. He could feel it coming on. It would come on its own terms, like a thing he couldn't stop or influence. He wanted _not_ to hurt Avon now, and was going to.

         What did Rojer know? What was Avon planning? Oh, it wouldn't be anything as simple as political betrayal, Blake knew. Avon would _never_. But whatever it was might hurt him more.

         "What did he mean, then?”

         "About what?”

         "You know."

         "I'm not telepathic."

         " _Dammit_ , Avon." Blake grabbed Avon’s shoulders helplessly. "Don't do this to me again, right when I need every scrap of what personal resources I have. Don't spring it on me. What did he _mean_ 'how long is this going to go on'?"

         Now, Avon thought, you are at the place of annihilation. Here it is.

         Avon had thought he'd have a grace period. He'd been dangerously optimistic yet again. Everything would be spoilt. He’d take only the thinnest, sickest pleasure in eating with Blake, working with Blake, caring for Rojer with Blake, when he knew all the while that Blake pitied him for the farce. Blake belonged to his rebellion and to everyone and probably to history, and _he_ _—_ he sneered and said

         "Let me go, Blake."

         Something worked in Blake's face, and Blake pushed Avon against the wall and slammed his mouth down over Avon's.

         Blake broke away to growl, " _Never_ ," and then he pushed back down. After the initial moment of shock (Avon's mouth fell open and Blake rushed in to fill the gap), Avon brought his hands up to clutch greedily at Blake's shoulders, his back. Blake released his mouth and Avon took gasping breaths as Blake ripped Avon’s shirt trying to get at his neck, which he kissed and licked and worried and bit.

         "Say you won't _leave_ me," Blake demanded, his voice cracking on the word.

         _Leave him?_ "I've belonged to _you_ since you told me to open the computer room door on the _London_. And I did it. Don’t you know by now? Haven’t you always known? I could no more leave you than I could––" Avon’s breath caught as Blake's hand rapidly undid his flies and pushed in, gripping his cock. Confident. Proprietary. Perfect. "I _never_ hated you, you stupid––" He gasped as Blake stroked him. "I _never_ ––"

         "My Avon," Blake murmured, pumping his hardening cock, holding his gaze relentlessly. Avon had to drop his head onto Blake's shoulder and fist a hand in Blake’s curls. "Than you could what––?” Blake pressed.

         " _Blake_." Without words, Avon asked not to be forced to outline all the things he’d be able to give up before relinquishing Blake. Blake let him have that, demanding something else instead.

         "Why didn't you _listen?_ I told you I loved you twice a day, and you let it sit there, you wouldn't _touch_ it." Blake worked him roughly, his anger not having entirely evaporated.

         "Like _hell_ you did," Avon growled, nails digging into Blake's shoulders.

         "I spend all my time with _you_ , Avon. I set this all up for _you_ , Avon. I was waiting for _you_ , Avon. I never let myself believe you were _dead_ , Avon."

         Avon swallowed, shut his eyes, and let himself hear everything he’d warned himself not to believe too much in. “And – on Albion, the first time, when you said you understood about Anna––"

         "Yes."

         "At Star One––"

         " _Yes_."

         "Then say it properly."

         "Oh for–– I love you. Utterly. Devastatingly."

         " _Good_ ," Avon laughed, delighted, and Blake dropped to his knees and pulled Avon's trousers down and shoved Avon's cock in his mouth without finesse. Avon's hands ran trembling through Blake’s hair, and Blake took him in so entirely it was like being held by him. Blake's thick tongue flicked Avon’s cock hard against the roof of his mouth in a way that made Avon suck in breath. They were both out of practice, perhaps, but Blake knew what he was doing. And then Blake was sliding a finger up along Avon's cock and into his own mouth to wet it, and pushing it back to press at Avon's entrance.

         "That is an _excellent_ idea," Avon said, dazed but charged with enthusiasm. "Your best. _That_ is _such_ an––"

         Blake laughed, a little raggedly, at this summary of his career. "Bedroom."

         Avon couldn't properly walk in his half-dressed state, and Blake helped him out of his clothes, eager not to lose time. In the bedroom Avon practically pounced on Blake, working him out of his jacket, kissing him insistently, pulling Blake down on top of him.

         "Do you have any––?"

         Avon smacked a bottle of lubricant into Blake’s hand. Blake raised an eyebrow.

         "I fuck myself thinking about you," Avon said, totally unapologetically. "Frequently. And silently, of course. There are things our son doesn't need to know."

         “No. Agreed." Blake slicked his fingers, and Avon watched like it was pornography.

         "May I lick you open, another time?" Blake asked, his tone indicating that he expected to be obliged.

         "You may do anything you like to me," Avon said, and normally he'd have smiled, as though that were a joke, but he caught Blake's eyes and let it rest, serious, and he felt himself flushing with the way Blake looked at him.

         Blake braced himself on his elbow and leaned over Avon, circling his entrance with a fingertip. Avon shuddered, and Blake slid in a single, thick finger. Crooked it. Fucked Avon with it slowly.

         "Say it again,” Avon demanded.

         Blake smiled, and it was young and powerful, kind and inimitable, and Avon _loved_ that smile.

         "What do you mean?" Blake mocked Avon's earlier pretended obliviousness. He didn't wait for Avon to ask again. "I love you. And incidentally I'm yours, if it matters."

         "It matters."

         Blake slid another finger in, and another. "Is this what you want?" he asked, meaning the act.

         "This is everything I want. Well," Avon smiled, letting the expression spill over his face, "perhaps not everything. We'll get to that. I have a list."

         "Of course," Blake laughed. "Of course you have a list. I think you're ready."

         "Yes."

         Blake lubricated and aligned himself, and Avon gasped as he pushed in, the head of Blake's cock popping into him. He met it with a ripple of shuddering pleasure.

         Avon twined his arms around Blake's neck, and Blake took Avon's hips in his hands. He fucked him close, deep and slow – pulling out almost entirely and then snapping all the way back in, forceful and lasting, enough to make Avon's head bounce with the thrusts. There was something almost brutal buried in the hard rhythm.

         "I will never leave you," Avon said in answer to the unspoken fear. "I could never do it."

         Blake nodded, apparently not wanting to speak in answer to that. After a moment Avon felt his own clutching want rise, and parted his mouth––

         "I love you," Blake said, catching him.

         Avon smiled. Indulgent, spoilt. "Again."

         Blake laughed and repeated it, taking Avon's cock in one hand and resuming his earlier stroking, swirling his thumb around the heavy head. Avon felt the rhythm pulling at him.

         "I'll come."

         Blake raised an eyebrow. "Is that a promise?"

         It was. Avon gripped Blake's arms, and Blake kept pounding into him while he writhed, and afterwards as aftershocks raced through him in electric bursts.

         "It's getting … too much…” Avon managed weakly.

         "You can handle it," Blake assured him, releasing Avon's twitching cock and stoking his hip before pulling Avon onto himself more fully and pushing them into something lighter and faster.

         " _Blake_!"

         "Do you want me to stop?"

         Blake would in an instant, Avon knew. But it hurt and it was wonderful. It pressed at the limits of his capabilities and endurance, and that was so very Blake that Avon was unwilling to lose it.

         "Oh god. No, keep––  _ah!_ ” Avon bit his lip as Blake came in him, hot and full. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way, couldn't have borne Blake not finishing in him. Avon felt replete, and Blake looked sated and content, and Avon had done that to him. For him.

         "You're staying?" Avon asked, after he'd cleaned himself off. He kept his voice neutral in case Blake didn't want to. Because of Rojer, because of anything.

         "Of course," Blake said, as though this was obvious.

         Avon raised an eyebrow. "I might not have wanted you to.”

         "You do. Besides, Avon, _I_ want to, and my bedroom is too far away to consider relocating the two of us to."

         "We have joined apartments. There's literally an internal door."

         “Oh, I know," Blake said, cleaning himself off with a towel Avon had offered him. "I've given that door an immense amount of thought. Probably more than a door deserves."

         "Still. You are entirely too confident in me," Avon said, taking the towel off him and throwing it onto the lid of the laundry bin (he’d deal with it later).

         Blake chuckled. "I afraid I'm going to be insufferably confident for months, after this. You'll have to restrain me from all kinds of excesses."

         "That makes a change," Avon deadpanned, getting into bed and ordering the lights off.

         After a moment, Avon said, "I love you."

         "Yes," Blake said, pulling Avon to his chest. "I know."

         Avon elbowed him in the gut, lightly, just to keep him in check.

 

***

 

         Rojer rapped on Porra's door at the specified time.

         "Come in," she called, and when he had she turned to look at him, "Oh my god, what's happened?"

         "Nothing."

         "You've been crying."

         Rojer winced. He'd not thought it was that obvious. "Just a spat with my parents."

         "You never have it out with them like that! Sit down." She put her tiny utili-kettle on. "So?"

         "I called my dad on his," Rojer waved a hand, “ _shit._ His epic pretence of cynicism and this thing he has with Father."

         "Oh god."

         "Yeah. I mean if I weren’t me, I’d probably be dead right now." He took a cup from her, made with the right amount of milk. She made herself one as well, either in solidarity or because she thought she, too, was going to need it to get through this conversation.

         " _Is_ that a pretence? I mean if that's a front, it's epic."

         “Well – yes. No. Sort of? Anyway, _then_ I accused my dad of picking me up as my father's political replacement, and I sort of implied he'd never really cared about _me_. And the _second_ I said it, I realised _how_ bad it was, and how it was utter bullshit, because even if he had ever thought of using me politically like that––"

         "Right." Porra nodded, coming over to sit next to him. "I mean – you needed to have the conversation, though, didn't you? At least once you needed to hear him say it isn’t like that. You don't really go in for ambiguity. And your dad doesn't say anything obviously reassuring unless you force him to, I expect."

         Rojer snorted weakly at the very idea. "We didn't really get through all that, though."

         "No, but there's the denouement. Every fight has the after-chat that does half the work of the fight, when you're too tired to be angry anymore."

         "Is this ours?"

         "Yeah."

         "Where should we start?"

         "Well, you're pretty spent, so I'll go. Here's a thing you were right about. I was jealous," she said after a pause, "which is a stupid cliché. Orphan girl envies beloved son, President's child, etcetera. But that would make sense and even be nicer than what I actually feel. Because you really love your parents. There's this whole survival thing between you and your dad that makes you incredibly close, and you're like, his everything. And now you and your father have fallen in love with one another, in a not-like-the-Federation-charges way, naturally."

         "Oh, naturally."

         "And it's so sweet I need to visit a dentist, obviously it is. And I should say I miss my parents, but I hardly remember them, and what I remember … isn’t fantastic or special. It's not your whole … fairy tale _thing_. Maybe it _could_ be, if I thought about it like that – but I don't want to erase who my parents were because I need them to be something else. And I don't even know that I _need_ them to be something else, really _._

         “The thing is, I didn't come to Blake because I missed Pasha and Jat,” she continued. “I came because what the Federation had done to them was wrong – and, I don’t know. Maybe I came because staying to help with Queen Selma's resistance work after King Ro's assassination looked so desperate and risky and _pointless,_ and because I didn't really have anyone to stay on Silmareno for. I don't know if I was brave or cowardly. I feel like I let people believe things about me that aren’t true just by not correcting them – people think I’m grief-stricken, that I’m doing this for my parents, and in a way I _am_ , but not––” She gestured helplessly and stopped.

         Rojer laughed. “You certainly aren’t a coward. Look at how you stand up to creepy Carnell – and,” he got more serious, “you left everything you ever knew, to keep yourself safe and stop yourself being used by the Federation, and to help. Besides, you were the brave one, willing to talk and waiting for me to be able to when I was a git who couldn’t even tell you I was sorry.”

         “ _You_ made us talk in the end,” she pointed out.

         Rojer snorted. “After you manoeuvred me into it with a lot of pointed ‘are you ready yet?’ looks. Give me a little credit, I didn’t miss those.” He took her hand. “I did miss you. Do you still feel pointless here, even now that you’re helping more directly?”

         “Yeah.”

         Rojer nodded. “I wondered about that, when we weren’t talking. I was thinking— I used to feel like we were pointless, sometimes, on _Scorpio,_ when we were running the financial cons. Worse than pointless, because we were hurting people sometimes, rather than helping. But we turned out to be so much more useful there than we knew, and definitely more useful than if we’d been throwing ourselves at communications bases and things like a tiny army, like Father did back at the beginning, when he had better resources to do it with. I think maybe in a couple of years, if things go well, we’ll really need young, clever, energetic people we can trust, and your having been here now will have made you ready for that.”

         “I didn’t think of it as a training course.”

         “I think Carnell thinks of everything as a training course,” Rojer offered.

         Porra shifted uncomfortably. “How can you stand him? He’s so fake.”

         “Well _you_ _’_ _re_ not, so stop worrying about it. I don't think any of what you said makes you fake. Maybe if none of this had ever happened, if your family hadn’t lived under Federation law, you would have known your parents more and liked them better. You can be angry at a missed chance. You can be detached without being unfeeling. You can even do Carnell’s work without becoming him, if that’s what he’s pushing you towards."

         Porra nodded. "I think he might be, yeah.”

         “You definitely have the patience for it. I _am_ sorry. I’m sorry I made you wait for that.”

         Porra exhaled. “Well, me too. I _was_ waiting for you to say something, to be a bit contrite. Because I was out of line, but you flipped and then _stayed_ mad at me and wouldn’t talk it through, and I didn't think that was fair."

         "It wasn't. I should have done. You were trying to help – you did help. I took what you said up the line, and we talked it through – that’s what that interview in _The Lindorian_ was about. I just didn't want to hear it. I was never going to want to. Anyway – it’s done now."

         "Even if we're not dating," Porra said, looking directly, steadily at him for the first time in their conversation, "I don't want us to be another thing each of us loses. All right? Because – and I know it's sad, because you have a lot of friends – you’re my _best_ friend. And… well, I can't fucking sew, all right?"

         "All right," he said, confused and amused.

         "I mean, who does that? And I had, like, no decent description, and I could _not_ ask your dad, so I went in blind here."

         From behind her pillow where she'd stashed it when he knocked, she took out a small blue elephant. Stuffed. It was inexpert work, but Porra knew how to look something up and push herself until she could complete the job, and so it was sound – sometimes rows of stitches covered the same joint, doggedly holding it together.

         "Ta da," she said lamely, brandishing it a little.

         "Oh my god."

         "Look, I know it's shit, all right? It's that blue elephant you were upset about losing."

         "I _know_ what it is, and it's not–– Porra. Porra, you're amazing. You are. This is _so_ kind." He hugged her tightly, and she shut her eyes. 

         "It was just a bit of sewing," she said dismissively, nonetheless enjoying how he’d looked at her like she'd cured a plague.

         "I want to be with you," he said matter-of-factly. "But if it doesn't work out, I don't want us to not be friends, if we can manage it. You're too valuable, for one. But you don't have to be valuable, that's not why I want you in my life. You just have to be you."

         Porra ruffled his hair. "You want to stay the night? I mean, considering you probably don't want to head back home right now."

         "Yeah, actually. But I don't think we should …”

         "No. I mean, we only just …”

         "Right."

         "But I still think it'll be really nice." He flushed slightly. "Holding you and such."

         Porra smirked. "I knew you for a cuddler."

 

***

 

         The next day, Avon sailed around, shark-grinning, in his leatheriest, studdiest outfit. He couldn't so much as put down a datapad without a flourish. He couldn't say, ‘Oh, _yes_ ’ to the tea lady’s, 'Any for you today?' without a crazed smile. Blake, meanwhile, was suffused with a relaxed, generous bonhomie. Those acquisitions were fine. That idea was excellent, provided they tweaked it a little, just here. Hello, how are you today, how is your wife, didn't she have a cold? Better now? Excellent. They needed everyone, after all!

         Deva stared at him like he'd been replaced by a cheerful automaton. Carnell just said, "Oh thank god, that could have gone _badly_ , and it wasn't my place. I didn't want to say anything before we took Earth at least."

         Blake gave him a strange look. "You knew?"

         Carnell didn't even bother answering, just pressed ahead with his business.

         Rojer crept in before dinner. He found Avon alone.

         "I'm sorry," Rojer blurted out. “Dad, I'm _really_ sorry, I didn't mean––"

         Avon waved him off. "I know you didn't. Let's run through it all, then – you can make your own decisions, and I shall attempt to offer advice rather than give orders, and to stop offering it when it's no longer useful to you. Because advice is for the recipient, rather than the giver. You are, of course, a person, however you came to be one. It's true I kept you rather than handing you over to state care because you were your father's child. Or clone, if you insist. But that has only a limited bearing on our relationship. And I do, in point of fact, love you. And I am proud of you. I will _always_ be proud of you."

         "I know.” Rojer swallowed, trying not to cry again. "I know. Dad––"

         He held out his arms, and Avon hugged him tightly, patting his back and ruffling his hair.

         "I love you," Rojer muttered into his dad's shoulder.

         "Good boy," his dad answered, kissing his head.

         Blake walked in, and Rojer gave him a hug too. "Sorry all around then?" Blake said kindly.

         Rojer laughed. "Shut up, Father."

         "How did it go with Porra?" Avon asked, by way of showing good faith.

         "Good. She, um … made me a blue elephant. Like the one I left in that hotel room when I was a kid, remember? She learned to sew to do it. She doesn't like the idea of me losing things, and doesn't want to lose me."

         "Oh, she's _good_ ," Blake said, arching an eyebrow. “Isn’t she, Avon?”

         "Well," Avon said, looking all the more vexed because he was trying not to find that both slightly endearing and an impressive play, "perhaps she might merit another chance, after all."

         They sat down to dinner (Avon had made a _lot_ of spaghetti), and midway through Blake said,

         "Rojer, how would you feel if you and your dad moved in with me? Would you be fine with that? Or we could tear out that wall,” he nodded at it, “so you could keep your bedroom, and give your dad a home office."

         Avon's head shot up. Blake continued to look between his spaghetti and Rojer.

         Rojer managed, "Yeah, I'd be fine with that. Either."

         "Good, good. How would you feel if your dad and I got married?"

         "That too––"

         "No," Avon said, "no this is not going to be _another_ scenario in which you build a plan around me, and effectually make it impossible for me to say no because you are afraid to ask me things, or because you want your own way and suspect you might not get it if you have to include _me_ in your plans." Avon smiled toothily. "I am _not_ going to marry you, Blake."

         Blake arched an eyebrow. "Aren't you?" His eyes were alight.

         "Not until you ask me properly."

         Blake cleared his throat. "Well, Avon––"

         "Not in front of our son over spaghetti. You will make a significant–– no, an _impressive_ deal of it. Now that I’m sure of you and in a position to bargain, you will pull out stops. You will make one of your ambitious, foolish plans _for me_. And _then_ you will ask."

         "And you'll say yes?"

         Avon grinned. "I might."

         "Do you have a preferred time-frame?"

         "Surprise me."

         "What the hell happened when I was gone last night?" Rojer demanded.

         Blake coughed. "This is excellent spaghetti."

 

***

 

         It wasn't _obscene_ , because Avon probably would have killed himself out of embarrassment, and it was private, but it _was_ a rather grand proposal. Avon pretended to dither over his acceptance ('this is so sudden!'), and Blake rolled his eyes.

         The ceremony was relatively private, and there wasn't a honeymoon so much as the staging of the next attack wave. Which Blake directed from Albion.

         "There wasn't much need to drug you this time," Avon commented when Blake complimented his trust. "I wake up when you get out of bed anyway."

         It slightly weirded Deva out that Blake now perfunctorily kissed Avon when they separated in halls to go off in opposite directions, or at the end of meetings after Avon had just finished tearing verbal strips off Blake, because they were headed to different appointments. Or Blake cleared his throat meaningfully when Avon was halfway out the door, and Avon rolled his eyes, came back and gave Blake a quick kiss, and slipped off. On one occasion, the two of them manoeuvred meetings around and disappeared up to one of the docked DSVs at what Deva later realised was the same time, for fairly obvious reasons of their own. But largely not a lot changed.

         Earth surrendered when they were through the second phase of pronged attacks. What surprised everyone, even Carnell, was the tight legal declaration of surrender and petition for admittance into the Alliance, which saved them so much time, and conferred a measure of legitimacy on the regime change. The document was complex and detailed. It must have been drafted in secret over months. It hadn't come from the Federation, but from independent adjudicators. It had signatories from a slew of important public bodies.

         "Where the hell did this come from?" Avon asked, scanning it rapidly.

         "I have no idea," Carnell said, as though the indeterminacy excited him.

         Avon hit the signatories page and started laughing at a name buried in the middle of the independent adjudicators.

         "I know exactly whose idea this was." And sure enough when they landed on Earth, Adjudicator Bas Avon was among the delegation waiting for them with the official hard-copy version of the petition.

         "Eye on the main chance, Bas?" Avon asked, brightly.

         "The least I could do for my own brother," Bas laughed. "But it was, of course, also an excellent career move. Welcome home, Kerr. Don't I have a nephew to meet?"

         "That's right – Rojer, come here. Didn't I tell you you had an uncle?"

         Blake shook his brother-in-law’s hand, his free hand resting on the small of Avon's back, at the base of his spine, where, Deva opined to Carnell, it seemed to have been glued.

         Security was ready, and the legal documentation was ready, and the outer worlds had elected Blake president again, for a full ten-year term, while Earth was still in the process of being cleaned up enough to have elections. (Earth later ratified the choice by referendum.)

         Within a day of Blake's official landing on Earth, coming in on the _New Liberator_ , they'd held something like a very socialist coronation. It was a huge public rally, with an invisible force-shield on the balcony to prevent an assassination attempt (Avon had insisted). Blake had actually cried in elation at _winning_ and in the face of the general celebration, and had kissed his husband (who, uncharacteristically, was laughing with what seemed to be actual delight) fiercely on camera.

         Then Blake had given a speech that was later acknowledged as one of his best, honouring the sacrifices of people who'd fought for liberty and the endurance of everyone who'd lived under the Federation's control. He’d told them the story of the people they would be, brave and kind together. He’d told them what they would value, what they deserved, what they owed one another, what a state was for. It was not one of his most subtle and elegant orations (though he gave those in due course, during the debates on re-socialisation of Federation troops, or on negotiating boundaries with non-human populations that the Federation had exerted its sphere of influence over), but it didn't need to be. A surfeit of elegance would even have soured it. It was the right speech for a crowd fresh from battle and crackling with joy, with eagerness to begin something new.

         Avon had, of course, proofread it.

 

***

 

         The cause of Roj Blake's death at age ninety was a state secret. His son and his Administration put about that it was heart failure. Blake had lived a hard life – three terms as president were enough to do anyone in. He'd had two back to back, one off (Sarkoff, he'd not run) and one on again, at the end of his life. The mean death age of a Federation citizen was about 130 now, though, so this comparatively early demise did need some answering. Rojer had quoted the physician who pronounced on William Morris's death, who'd said it was caused by "simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men."

         Blake's suicide was handled quietly by the people who loved him. And his staff, friends and remaining family had loved him deeply.

         After Avon had died the year before, aged eighty nine (illness, not long), Blake had worked hard. He'd set his affairs in order, politically. The situation was as good as he could make it, and he was sensible of a need for other, younger voices to step in. Blake had been the right president to hold the fledgling Alliance together, but even there, some of his successes were down to the people he had surrounded himself with. (Though Blake had always had the wit and skill to surround himself with useful people.) Avon, for example, had pressed the arts funding that was a major part of the Blakean legacy – the public buildings, the elegant new anti-Dome cities, the architectural preservation initiatives, the reinvigoration of the theatre. Perhaps it was awful nepotism, that they'd done some things simply because the President's husband wanted them. But then Blake had agreed, really, with Avon, and, indirectly, with Churchill – what had they been fighting for, if not this? What was inessential about wonder?

         But Blake felt his limits. It was time for a president who'd come of age under freedom to take over. For someone with that vision of the world, unbounded by chains. At times Blake almost resented the fact that there were younger people now who didn't understand what it had been like. He'd fought for the abnegation of his own consciousness of oppression, for his own irrelevance. But that was better, wasn't it? Or at least, it couldn’t be helped. Blake knew how to go gently, in some things.

         As well as making political arrangements, Blake had tied up personal business. They'd kept a somewhat grand (Avon) private residence, rather than living in designated presidential apartments. Blake had kept to it a lot after Avon's death, walking around in his memories.

         It would have been hard for Rojer to work out that his father had decided to die. He hadn't wanted to know, and everything Blake did had looked like throwing himself into his work as a means of grieving, which had made sense, for Blake.

         Though Rojer still resented him a little for the call. "Rojer, are you busy? Good. No, I thought you wouldn't be tonight. I need you to come over to the house. Now. It's rather important."

         He'd arrived in time to be with his father as he died, peacefully.

         "It's too late for that," Blake had said to him very calmly, as Rojer, grown man though he was, had cried and sworn at him and fumbled uselessly for the comm., a teleport bracelet. "This is what I want. Shh, Rojer. It's all right." And his great body had subsided into stillness in Rojer's arms. And Rojer was grateful, after a fashion, that his father had let him be there, rather than going alone. He was grateful that he'd had the chance to attend on both his parents' deathbeds. (Avon had kept telling Blake he didn't want to leave him, at the end, and Blake had soothed him with a shuddering hand and kept kissing him, kept saying, "I know, Avon." To rhyme with even. Even unto this. "I know.")

         Rojer would have stopped Blake, given more time. He would have manipulated his father ruthlessly, even knowing it was wrong. When that wasn't what Blake had wanted, and Blake had had a choice. So perhaps it was better this way, even if it didn’t feel like it.

         Blake had spent the year between his husband’s death and his own writing letters, whenever he was free. Hand-writing them. Settling his accounts. They were often long, and each was beautiful. He had written them to everyone he cared about, and he'd cared about a lot of people. Honest, thoughtful thanks for their political contributions, for what they'd meant to him as people.

         Vila had bawled. Rojer hadn't known (because Avon had never told him) about a time when he'd been just an infant, when a scientist had forced the _Scorpio_ crew into accepting a doomsday weapon in exchange for Orac. It had been a trap, of course. The scientist had planted something on the shuttle Avon and Vila were taking back to the _Scorpio_ , something heavy, and they'd been going down. In the end they’d managed to shed enough weight to correct their flight path, but for the weight of one man. Avon had told Blake about how Vila had swallowed and said, "You have Rojer to look after. So I'll do it. I'll go." And Avon, sick at having considered it (and in that moment he _had_ considered it), had said they'd try and find something else first, and they had. Most of Blake's letter had been about himself and Vila – the decades they'd known each other. But buried in it had been a thanks for the life of his husband and child, and for that scrap of his husband's soul.

         Jenna had read her letter at the bedside when Rojer had called her in, and then bent to kiss Blake's still forehead. She had followed him, and let his belief carry her until she found her own. Deva’s eyes had misted and he’d coughed at his and said, Yes, well.

         Shorter letters, for Tarrant, Soolin, Dayna, so many others. Soolin had laughed reading hers. The letters weren't maudlin or grim – they were vigorous and ruminative at turns, adequate answers to long friendships and companionship, as best Blake could give them. And he'd felt a need to give them.

         Rojer had found the letters to the dead in the secret drawer in his father's old-fashioned desk. Some people from the Freedom party. Cally. Gan. He'd read them. He knew his father, and Blake wouldn't have minded. He wouldn't have written them, if he hadn’t wanted them found by Rojer and read, when Rojer was cleaning out the house and had time. In a more appropriate season. Blake had had a great respect for history, and would have wanted posterity to know about what these people had done for their sake.

         Rojer hadn't found the last letter. Tesh had. He had two adult daughters, Tesh and Ima, and a failed marriage with a Terran woman he loved but couldn't quite make it work with (a gently failed marriage, involving a steady affection that had endured the end of a quiet love). Tesh had been taking a day away from the university Rojer had attended, where she taught maths of a purity that made Rojer's head spin, using the Orac databank for research. She’d surveyed the place with her dark, surprisingly emotional eyes, her dark curls wrapped with little romanticism in a sensible scarf, because it was dusty in what death and time couldn’t stop her thinking of as her grandparents’ house.

         When Rojer had had children the geneticists had swapped an appropriate amount of his dad's DNA into the mix, because the person Rojer's genes thought he was bore an inexact relationship to the reality. Avon showed through in Tesh, but then she had her mother in her, too, lending Tesh her Japanese complexion, and the hard mouth was Blake's. As were the curls in that handkerchief.

         Dusty, Tesh pronounced, because Grandfather hadn't cleaned much after Granddad's death, when he'd let the cleaning man go. Too much to do. Blake had managed dishes and laundry and nothing was _filthy_ , but Granddad had been the one who’d cared about dust in computer vents and who’d paid someone to keep the place sparkling, and Grandfather hadn't cared about much of anything, after he was gone.

         "He did," Rojer told her. "He still cared about people. You read your letter."

         Tesh looked away because it had affected her deeply, and she didn't like showing that. "You know what I mean."

         Fashion had come back around. Tesh wore a gown very like the ones that had been popular when the Alliance was new. Grecian, rouched and draping, pure white and gentle cream. They'd all gone in for romanticism and naturalism, voluptuous curves balanced against jagged lines. Looking at her here was like looking, for an instant, at the past. It felt like the times when people called Rojer 'Avon'. It was perfectly correct, and mostly Rojer took it in stride. But sometimes it pierced him like a weapon, and he wanted to turn his head and see if his dad was there, just behind him.

         It was Tesh, helping her father pack up the place, who had flipped up the piano-seat lid and found, buried in the books, the final letter. Rojer laughed at the placement – a light rebuke to him, a joke from a man who seemed to have been born to make ‘dad jokes’. It was the one Rojer had been surprised not to find. Avon.

         They hadn't wanted to read it right then, and had lain it aside. It was a few years before Rojer had able to return to it – he kept forgetting it, and such forgetting is rarely entirely accidental. In truth Rojer felt that when he read it, his parents would really be dead. Their story would be told and over, and that would be the end.

         When Rojer felt ready to face that end, he'd been elected to what he privately still thought of as his father's job, and was waiting to serve his term in office. He was with Porra, his soon-to-be Minister for Non-Human Affairs, when he finally plucked up the courage. He asked Porra, who always told the truth, what publishing the Blake letters would look like.

         Blake’s memoirs of the war years had been scanty – campaign notes rather than personal reflections. Rojer thought his father deserved a fuller personality in the historical record. He feared, slightly, that Blake would be cannibalised by his legacy, that bored revisionists would nitpick the brief flirtation with the Terra Nostra and his original Star One plan forever, making cases for a brutal, utilitarian Blake that ran not precisely against the facts, but certainly against their fuller context, their spirit. Incidents and not the years, threads and not the pattern.

         “Legacy building," Porra said.

         Rojer shook his head. "Blake doesn't need more of a legacy."

         Rojer had already been elected, and it was the beginning of his term – he thus couldn’t be accused of reminding people who his father had been to carry the vote. Besides, Rojer had been elected in his own right, only faintly on his father's memory. He’d spent his entire life in the service of the Alliance, either as a rebel, in the civil service's programmes division, or most recently as Administrator of Earth. He'd been popular in and of himself since the retrospectively-embarrassing interviews Carnell had suggested forty years ago. They both knew that some commentators had raised objections to the same family supplying two presidents in a century in a galaxy of billions of people – which Porra thought was fair, but beside the point, really, given that Blake and Rojer had both been the best people for the job, and no one could say either of them hadn’t dedicated their lives to this.

         "Gilding the lily won't do much damage, then,” Porra said. “The recipients of the letters will have to consent, of course."

         "Most of them already have."

         "But you haven't opened that one.” Porra nodded at it. "And you want me to."

         Rojer remembered having made love to her for the first time when Earth fell. She'd moved back home to Silmareno some years afterwards and served in their government because it was what she'd needed to do, to face herself. He thought, as he often did these days, that perhaps someday, cliché as it was to end up with your childhood girlfriend, he and Porra might just. If Porra would have him. If Porra was interested. But she looked at him with a frank intensity, and he thought perhaps they were already inveigled in a kind of long love that worked according to its own schedule, that was only awaiting its time.

         Porra took the letter (fingers brushing his, a gentle whisper of sensuality – why did love always make you feel young?), and held it in her lap, unopened.

         "He had one for you?” she asked.

         "Yes."

         "Can I see it?"

         He reached into his desk and handed it over. She read that first, as though in preparation. "What's this bit – ‘tis common'?"

         " _Hamlet._ All fathers die."

         "And so they do." He watched her read, feeling like he was invading _her_ privacy somehow. He knew the finish by heart:

_And of all the things I have ever done, though it doesn't quite seem fair, given how little I was responsible for any of it, the thing I am proudest of is being your father, Rojer._

         "It's good,” she said eventually. “Mine was good too."

         "Well. He was a good man."

         It was fitting, somehow, Rojer thought, that Porra would stand between him and Avon's letter. It had taken Avon years to like Porra. Rojer didn't know if Porra had ever liked Avon, though she'd come to respect him, and had taken a blaster-shot to the shoulder for him on the disastrous Betafarl treaty expedition. They'd been, in some ways, too alike to be friends.

         Porra took a breath, and slit Blake's last letter open with an antique letter-opener that had belonged to the man himself. She began to read, and Rojer looked away. It wasn't as long as it might have been. Some of the others had been longer. But the writing was tight, and went on for was several pages.

         "You can publish it.” Porra cleared her throat. “It’s–– You should read it."

         Rojer exhaled and took the letter back from her. His dad's surname at the top – they’d never fallen out of that silly schoolboy habit.

         _Logic has never explained what death is,_ it began. _I am coming to find you, wherever you are, and I know you will be waiting for me. It may take time for us to find each other, if that concept has any meaning to us now. The universe is vast. But in some form, I will be with you again. I believe it utterly._

_I know you really tried. No one could have done more, Avon. I know you never meant to leave me, and I hope I made you understand that at the end. I walked with death for many years, and I came to know it for what it was. It was easy to give, to slip into, sometimes even to pull out of. I have skimmed my fingers over the surface of it myself. Death is thin. It is frail, it is tenuous. It is nothing to what we have given and been to one another. Nothing at all._

_I never told you that I loved you almost immediately. It didn't seem respectable, somehow, to have loved you even for your worst qualities, there at the very beginning. That was a real but thin love, and I barely knew it for what it was. It was nothing to how I felt when you saved my life on Silmareno (by then, I knew it well, and you had burned all frailty out of it). Nothing to how I felt when you held the ship. Nothing to how I loved you when I saw you again, alive and with our son. Nothing to how I felt when we married, nothing to what it was to lose you._

The letter went on, and Rojer blinked wetness from his eyes. Put it down to continue in a moment. Porra took his hand.

         "Do it then." She smiled. "Go on. Publish them. Big fat real books of the things. Hard covers, raised titles you trace with your fingers."

         "Not worried that it’s too much, then? Or about the people who’ll call it legacy building?" Rojer teased.

         Porra laughed. "Oh, fuck them."


End file.
